Former head of the RIAA, Hillary Rosen, says she regrets the RIAA’s decision to sue individual downloaders, noting that it the policy simply ignores the reality of an evolving technological landscape.

She’s say that people regularly accuse her “…of suing college students and other “innocents” in my past role as Chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America The lawsuits against individuals initiated by the RIAA was (were) started after I left.”

In a blog posting on “The Huffington Post,” she makes plain her opinion that the RIAA’s strategy is altogether wrong and irrational as it fails to address the root causes of the problem or even address the future of technology and media sharing that they have long watched pass by them from the sidelines.

To make plain her position she writes:

“I do share a concern that the lawsuits have outlived most of their usefulness and that the record companies need to work harder to implement a strategy that legitimizes more p2p sites and expands the download and subscription pool by working harder with the tech community to get devices and music services to work better together. That is how their business will expand most quickly.”

Is that rational thinking I smell? Too bad it’s about 10 years and billions of dollars too late. Or is it? If individuals truly had a viable alternative to the illegal downloading of music files perhaps they could be persuaded to change their ways and the RIAA could at last join the rest of us in the 21st century.

The iTunes and iPod configuration, for all its benefits and pleasantries, still stifles the potential uses usually afforded a buyer of music, particularly those who lack an iPod or a MAC PC to harness their music’s “full potential.” Not to mention the fact that the user is restricted in his ability to transfer the files that he buys off the iTunes site from one device to another. Who thought of that BS? You buy a song and it’s never really yours. What a crock.

In any event, it’s nice to hear a former RIIAA chief admit the hubris that is such a standing hallmark of those execs in their ivory record towers. Too bad the rest of us still have no alternatives but to continue to do that “voodoo that we do so well.”