Hilary Rosen may be the Johnny Damon of the music world. Damon, formerly the center fielder for the Boston Red Sox took the money and ran to the arch-rival New York Yankees, a move met with hatred in Boston and skepticism in New York. Rosen went from being chief of the Recording Industry Association of America, to consulting for XM Radio in its fight against the RIAA.

Wired News has an interview with Rosen in which she speaks about the direction the RIAA has taken since her departure, the balance between security and interoperability and even XM's battle with her former employer. It's worth a read, and one comment on XM's legal troubles in particular caught my attention:

"There's been a lot of bad information reported about this, both on what the device does and the business choices XM has made. People have said, well Sirius chose to pay additional monies for their devices but XM didn't. That's not true. XM did offer to pay additional monies, in fact, at greater levels than what Sirius is paying, but the record companies, I think, were just looking for a lawsuit on this one because they're hesitant about these devices going forward."

This is something I hadn't heard before, and it adds some perspective to a few things, if it's true. I chalked up XM's failure to reach a settlement on its new generation of portable receivers/recorders to a desire to fight this battle, or a complete lack of foresight. It looks like it may have just been an axe to grind for the RIAA. — Brian Ward

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Technorati tags: RIAA, piracy, xm.