There was a time in my life during which I left Richard Marx's "Paid Vacation" album in my stereo system for weeks at a time. This was not because I felt a spiritual craving for the music so strong that only repeated listenings would satisfy. No, it was the single worst CD I could dredge up out of my music collection, and I thought it might be effective as alarm-clock music. Hearing it, would I not have to rise at once to shut the disc off?

Turns out that it was just too inoffensive, too polished, too saccharine to yank me from my slumbers, but Richard Marx this week has partially redeemed himself for the album's creation (and for the $11 I must have spent on it back in high school). Marx issued a strong statement against the "greedy actions of the major labels" after hearing about the $1.92 million Jammie Thomas-Rasset verdict.

As a longtime professional songwriter, I have always objected to the practice of illegal downloading of music. I have also always, however, been sympathetic to the average music fan, who has been consistently financially abused by the greedy actions of major labels. These labels, until recently, were responsible for the distribution of the majority of recorded music, and instead of nurturing the industry and doing their best to provide the highest quality of music to the fans, they predominantly chose to ream the consumer and fill their pockets. So now we have a "judgment" in a case of illegal downloading, and it seems to me, especially in these extremely volatile economic times, that holding Ms. Thomas-Rasset accountable for the continuing daily actions of hundreds of thousands of people is, at best, misguided and at worst, farcical. Her accountability itself is not in question, but this show of force posing as judicial come-uppance is clearly abusive. Ms. Thomas-Rasset, I think you got a raw deal, and I'm ashamed to have my name associated with this issue.

Richard Marx's opinion carries no legal weight, of course, though it's notable that his song "Now and Forever" was one of the 24 tracks for which Thomas-Rasset was ordered to pay. The track was actually played in court to verify that it was the same one retrieved from the tereastarr@KaZaA share folder—and one of the trial's few moments of levity came when the judge asked why the playback of such a terrific song had been cut short? (He was apparently serious, preferring Marx's smooth acoustic guitar to the No Doubt track that preceded it.)

Who needs to be liked?

In the wake of the RIAA win, the organization's legendarily poor public image somehow got even worse. Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis called the Thomas-Rasset ruling "infamous as one of the most wrong-headed in the history of the American judicial system—not to mention that it will forever stand as the best evidence of the contempt of the old-school music industry toward the music lovers who once were its customers."

Columnist Robert X. Cringely, riffing on the Journey tracks that Thomas-Rasset now owes $80,000 apiece for, headlined a recent column, "Don't stop believing in the RIAA's capacity for evil." Clever.

How has the RIAA responded to the $1.92 million verdict? "Clinical detachment" is probably not the best response in the emotional aftermath of the case, but that's exactly what we got today from the RIAA's Joshua Friedlander, who compared the Thomas-Rasset jury to a really helpful focus group.

"Last week we got a chance to listen to one of these groups outside the usual circumstances," he wrote. "It wasn't a research project, and it wasn’t by sitting behind a two-way mirror... This group of 12 Minnesotans showed us that, despite the protestations of some pundits who suggest that the digital world should resemble some kind of new wild west, the majority understands and believes that the same laws and rules we follow every day apply online. Not just in theory, but in practice. Another group of 12 people presented with similar questions said the same thing two years ago. That makes a sample size of only 24, but it's certainly enough to learn from."