A few people are more than a little concerned that the RIAA won a lawsuit yesterday – and the woman they won against was ordered to pay them $222,000. The case, apparently, was brought to the jury referencing only 24 songs. 24. $222,000. 24. $222,000. You just have to love the law sometimes – seems fair, no?

Or, if you prefer, you can call it irrational and unconstitutional – which is exactly what Ray Beckerman, a partner in law firm Vandenberg & Feliu, called the verdict. If you are more inclined to roll this way, you might find Robert L. Frost’s article Rearchitecting the music business: Mitigating music piracy by cutting out the record companies worth a read.

The best part of this article, in my opinion, is a reminder of exactly what the RIAA and others are protecting – a model where consumers have long paid $15 – $25 per CD, and a whopping $1.30 flowed back to the artists (though as noted in the paper, this is probably an overestimate given production costs and others must be subtracted before the artist cut starts).

24, $222,000. $1.30, $15. I see a pattern developing here somewhere.

This business model wasn’t always totally ridiculous – for a variety of reasons tied to broadcast media, the costs of physical production and distribution, and what not there was a case to be made that this was in fact neccesary. But that case no longer really exist. Digital music files, the long tail – we don’t need that old model anymore. There is a better way – and one that doesn’t involve people getting sued for $10,000 a song anymore. It just needs to be built from the ground up, by someone, somehow, someday.

There are signs that the pace of change is accelerating (search Paul McCartney on this blog, for example)… then signs like this lawsuit that the pace of change is grinding to a halt again. So how do we get to that magical tipping point where (say) artists can sell full albums online for $4 and make more than they ever have before… and consumers get better value at the same time?