Hold up — I had a great time talking to the RIAA guy
And since the RIAA is both the group that lobbies for changes to the law and also the group that files lawsuits about things that affect record labels and distributors, Mitch is a pretty busy guy these days.
Key points
- So they decided it’d be a good idea, since I was youngish at the time, to make me go to college campuses, go to auditoriums, and convince these college students that they shouldn’t use peer-to-peer technology.
- That was when I decided to go be a copyright lawyer, which set the rest of my career in motion — and Mitch was in the background as a young lawyer at the RIAA working on those cases.
- This conversation was a real full-circle moment for me: I was in college when Napster hit, and the RIAA became everyone’s villain for suing kids for downloading music.
Today, I’m talking with Mitch Glazier, who is CEO and chairman of the RIAA.
That’s because here in 2026, Mitch, the RIAA, the record labels, the artists, and ordinary people are all pretty unhappy with the big AI companies in the same way, for training on everyone’s work without permission and flooding our feeds with slop.
Additional details
- So part of me was very deeply, very genuinely surprised to discover just how much fun I had talking to Mitch.
- So it was actually a good experience in the end, but it certainly did not feel like it at the time.
- I think you’re going to be able to tell, Mitch and I had a lot of fun talking about it.
- I mean, it had been a long time, a much more gradual change and much less abrupt.
- I remember one time I followed Chuck D, who was there promoting peer-to-peer.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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