Just when you think there might be the slightest ever hope, the little-ist, teeny-ist hope that the RIAA might wind up getting a clue, they rush in to set us right.

Through Boing-Boing , a report that RIAA perceives they have a marvelous opportunity to teach college students the deepest morale values:

Yet this is about far more than the size of a particular slice of the pie. This is about a generation of music fans. College students used to be the music industry’s best customers. Now, finding a record store still in business anywhere near a campus is a difficult assignment at best. It’s not just the loss of current sales that concerns us, but the habits formed in college that will stay with these students for a lifetime. This is a teachable moment — an opportunity to educate these particular students about the importance of music in their lives and the importance of respecting and valuing music as intellectual property.

(From an Op-Ed in Inside Higher Education).

I just love this. I guess the most glaring stupidity is the conception that college students suddenly have new opportunities to do things they didn't before they walked on campus. But the more profound sadness is - as always - the complete inability to understand the huge transformation in how people engage with music and other content, and how much of a new opportunity there is for culture industries.

Libraries are beyond this, thankfully; even if they believe (sometimes, perhaps even often, justifiably) that they know better than students how to find information on-line, they don't sue them for what the students perceive as a simple, common practice.