Warner Music Group’s legal team is working overtime.

First, let’s commend the Warner legal eagles for earning more money from the settlement of lawsuits than the music division made from the sales of recorded music. WMG recently collected a whopping $110 million from BMG to settle the Napster copyright infringement lawsuit. As I mentioned in an earlier rant, WMG is also suing to block AnywhereCD from selling Warner Music Group CDs. Now WMG has gone and sued Imeem.com for copyright infringement, even though Imeem is using RIAA approved fingerprint technologies to monitor user uploads.

One must question the vision behind attempting to shut down potential sales and exposure opportunities before they get a chance to prove themselves. Imeem is fun. It exposes new music to fans, ala radio. Why not see if it can help sell music? Why encumber this start-up with the drain of litigation when they seem to be helping to expose music?

Plus, are the revenues from online downloads and Internet lawsuits really reaching the artists? Yet another issue eventually to be decided in court.

Let’s look at what can be learned from history. When commercial radio was first introduced, it was sued by some of the major live performing bands, who felt radio was going to kill their fan base. What artist today wouldn’t want as much radio exposure as possible? The radio industry might not have gotten off the ground if this musicians’ suit prevailed. Also, when cable TV was introduced, it was given an exemption from paying broadcast royalties to help it get started. And the Internet was given an exemption from local sales taxes to help its fledgling commerce sector.

But instead of cutting Internet pioneers some slack, the record companies are trying to shape an economic structure on the World Wide Web by suing their fans and Internet innovators. If current recorded music sales are any indication of the success of these lawsuits, then this is a truly failed strategy.

Not even a lunatic would continue down this path.