“Negative Ghostrider, the patter in full”. I know, lame, but it’s a line from Top Gun that has just stuck with me over the years. Every time I read blog maverick, it just comes to mind, and it did again with Mark Cuban’s latest post about the RIAA and yahoo.com’s new music service. The guy writes some fair stuff, I just don’t always agree with him, and this happens to be one of those cases.

For those not in the know, yahoo.com announced a service where you can have access to their million song catalog for about five bucks a month. Cuban’s claim is that with this, comes the implication that a month’s worth of pirated music is only worth five bucks.

The RIAA can no longer claim that students who are downloading music are costing them thousands of dollars each. They cant claim much of anything actually. In essence, Yahoo just turned possession of a controlled music substance into a misdemeanor. Payable by a $5 per month fine.

And there is where his argument falls apart. It’s not that I agree with what the RIAA does, I actually think they are going to screw themselves in the long run, at the same time, I can not agree with Cuban either. The RIAA sues music uploaders, not music downloaders. Yes, one can argue that those who they sue are ignorant to the fact the every song they download is simultaneously being uploaded as well, however, claiming ignorance has not proven to be the best court defense. The mere fact that yahoo.com is offering unlimited music at five dollars a month does set a bar, it certainly can be translated as monthly music listening is indeed worth about that.

When the RIAA sues someone, from all the reports I have read, it costs the infringer around five thousand dollars. I don’t know how it works in other states, but the small claims suit limit is exactly the same amount, which could explain the reason for why they chose this amount. What Cuban does not consider is that they are suing for distribution, not usage. The RIAA’s real loss is that your one download allows thousands of others the ability to re-download that file from your computer. This infringement can not so easily be quantified.

If you have “sharing” turned off in your p2p application, then I can agree with Cuban, since most who get sued are getting sued for their ignorance in how this technology works, I can estimate that they are in fact sharing a lot of music to others. Unwittingly or not, this is what the RIAA is fighting to stop. It’s just too hard to calculate as easily as Cuban claims. One person sharing music may very well have allowed tens of thousands of people access to their personal library of music. This is certainly worth more than five measly bucks. It’s worth the tens of thousands of shares multiplied by five dollars.

Personally, I do not think the yahoo music service is going to make it. At such a low cost, one can only assume this is just a small amount over their break even point. They are trying to get a foot in the door and make a name for themselves in the music industry. Much like the blogs that simply rehash anything they see on slashdot, yahoo is doing the same, just twisting what Apple has already laid out. Considering that Apple has captured almost the entire hardware player market with the iPod, it leaves very little left for yahoo as potential market. In case you were wondering, no, their service is not compatible with the iPod.

Yahoo will certainly make a dent, they are going to kill off Napster and Real Rhapsody in short order. At the very least, they will force those two companies to drop prices, if you follow the stock market at all, both Napster and Real lost massive shares on the announcement of yahoo’s music service. Apple only saw a marginal drop, and has since recovered. So that leaves us with Apple and Yahoo in the game. Rumor has it that Apple has a monthly based service ready to roll out, but is reserved for an emergency case only. They have done their research, this is just not what people want. Where Apple gets it right, and everyone gets it wrong is that a buck a song is not the issue. It has nothing to do with cost here. And, unfortunately, it has nothing to do with end user options, which I wish we had more of. It’s all about ease of use, luckily, thats what Apple is all about.