CNET has a terrific interview with Rio Caraeff of Universal Music Group’s eLabs. Caraeff is a new breed of record exec – the kind of people we’d actually want running the industry. He’s a software guy and a mobile guy.

UMG digital chief on iTunes, DRM, and Android [CNET Digital Media]

The record industry has clearly seen the light on DRM, so that’s not really news, except that now you can see them saying it in public (and I imagine there has been long-running internal lobbying from those in the industry who got it long ago).

The news for me really what he has to say about the mobile space – his expertise. On iPod, he says what we don’t need is more proprietary alternatives: “I don’t think having more devices and more proprietary software or hardware in the market is the right answer.”

But most encouraging to me is how bullish he is on Google’s Android platform – and the fact that the proof is already available in the numbers available now. It seems the Web world is attracted to whatever is shiny, new, and not-ready-for-primetime, so bloggers last week forgot about Android and moved on to Palm’s (not-shipping) WebOS and Palm pre. That’s all fine and good, and WebOS certainly follows some of the same trends Android does, but let’s not lose focus just yet, right?

Universal worked with Amazon on their integrated Android store, and the results sound very impressive.

…now Amazon will tell you that Android is their single largest source of downloads from any third-party partnership that they’ve ever done. It’s a tremendous amount of consumption that we’re seeing once you integrate it seamlessly into a user experience that’s elegant and easy to use. It’s not 10 clicks. It’s very elegant and easy. We’re starting to see consumption increase significantly.

It’s early days on Android. There’s not that many out there on T-Mobile, but even with the small amount out there, they’re downloading and purchasing a ton of music over the air on T-Mobile.

This to me points to some encouraging signs:

Much of the debate online about the record industry has devolved – with quite a lot of help from the misguided message of the US trade group, the RIAA – into a debate about piracy. It winds up being something dumb, like, “Piracy is evil!” “No, piracy is great!” Wow, this should be a really insightful discussion – I can’t wait!

Piracy is, pure and simple, “loss prevention.” People often laugh off the comparison between piracy and things like shoplifting. But I think that comparison isn’t made enough – because if it were made, and made fairly, the record industry might remember what it’s business actually is. It’s business is selling something. If that becomes secondary to preventing theft, they cease to be a real business. Whether you’re scared of piracy or think it’s harmless, you ought to be able to agree. This ignorance is a disease that has threatened at times to infect music software creators, too – and I think the same issues apply.

The counter-argument even from some RIAA critics is that record sales don’t matter to musicians, or that sales of recordings is doomed. Those are interesting arguments. They just don’t have actual facts to back them up. With musicians selling music direct and working out new means of distribution with labels, the former is silly. Sure, not all musicians rely on music sales – some of us rely on things like teaching guitar lessons or (ahem) writing about music technology. But many other artists do think about selling music. Digital tech means that for bands like Sound Tribe Sector 9, they can even tie this to lucrative live performance. (STS9 now earns lots of revenue by selling downloads of live performances to concertgoers. I’m sure others could follow; I just happen to talk to the STS9 guys and know this.)  And most importantly, with explosive growth in mobile music, online music downloads, streaming music, Internet radio, terrestrial digital radio, music communities, the recording as a business is here to stay, whether you like it or not.

Not that you’d know any of this listening to the RIAA, because the only issue they want to talk about is piracy – not the actual sales one would associate with an “industry.” So why is no one calling foul – not only because the RIAA pursues abusive legal intimidation, but because they seem unable to act in their own self interest as an industry? Isn’t that a little … odd?

The problem is, music recording is often treated differently from other businesses; we view it in a vacuum, without precedent or comparison.

Have a quick look at the RIAA’s website:

http://riaa.org/

What happens when people targeted by record industry legal intimidation fight back? What if they not only defend themselves, but go on the offensive, counterclaiming the industry is abusing the law and legal process? What if courts decide the industry really can’t hijack an unrelated PC belonging to someone’s Mom and Dad? That’s what’s at stake in a case in Rhode Island.

Now, the exciting conclusion to the face-off between record industry lawyers and a class full of Harvard Law students and their professor. Well – sort of. This is legal drama we’re talking, so it may be neither exciting nor conclusive.

Music DRM may be a thing of the past, online sales may be growing, but that doesn’t mean the U.S. record industry has missed a beat in its ongoing legal and lobbying campaign against music piracy online.

The latest battle starts today in Rhode Island federal court. The difference this time: the RIAA and record companies will have to face a Harvard Law prof and his students. Prof. Charles Nesson and his team allege the industry is abusing the court system, unfairly making “examples” out of the people they’re suing, and invading privacy.

Whatever your feelings about the righteousness of litigation as a deterrent to piracy, the case in particular gets pretty strange. Rhode Island residents Arthur and Judie Tenenbaum face having their home computer seized as evidence, despite the fact that even the industry legal team doesn’t contend this particular computer was used for the alleged downloading. The couple’s son faces a stunning $1 million+ in possible damages, but only allegedly shared seven songs on Kazaa – and the couple didn’t even own the computer when their son lived with them.

The team will be up for interviews, so I’ll try to follow up – let us know if you have questions for them. More here:

RIAA v. Joel Tenenbaum @ the blog CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion [Harvard Law]

Updated: Early word is that the hearing has been rescheduled, Prof. Nesson isn’t admitted to argue in a Rhode Island court, and the judge (rightfully) denied the RIAA motion to look at Joel Tenenbaum’s parents’ computer, since it wasn’t involved. More official details forthcoming.

In other news, Jim Griffin of Warner Music Group continues to push a plan to offer a blanket license to campuses to avoid litigation by allowing students to pay a voluntary monthly fee to download music from file sharing services. It’s not entirely clear to me why this scheme continues to attack such ire online. Ars Technica rightfully says hold the kneejerk responses and wait for the details. There’s certainly a precedent: clubs, bars, concert venues, and the like already pay blanket license fees for performance rights, and the revenue is ultimately distributed to the people who own the work (think publishers and writers). That’s not to say the plan isn’t rife with potential problems, and it seems to me could even endanger efforts to encourage things like Creative Commons licensing. But without more details, it’s tough to criticize the idea without taking into account both its pitfalls and potential.

One thing everyone ought to be able to agree on, perhaps even some of the beleaguered record labels: ongoing litigation has been ugly and unproductive, and still doesn’t solve the underlying problem. With broad wireless Internet access on the horizon, even if I were to play devil’s advocate and assume I was an RIAA member wanting to stop campus sharing, it seems just scaring campuses into blocking these services isn’t really a solution.

And as artists, our primary concern ought to be that these responses aren’t doing what we most desperately need: establishing a real business model and promotional possibilities for emerging distribution online.