RIAA Wants Your Tax Money To Arrest You
from the oh-this-should-be-fun dept
Do you get the feeling the RIAA is just foaming at the mouth and has never actually stopped to maybe think about what they're saying? Their latest move is to ask Congress to put more money towards arresting music "pirates". This fits with the RIAA's general stance that everyone is a criminal until proven innocent. They want extra money to go to the Justice Department's cybercrime unit - but only if that money is focused on fighting "intellectual property piracy" instead of actual cybercrime. Hilary Rosen who sounds more ridiculous every day tries to make it sound as though people sharing music is more dangerous than any other sort of computer "crime".
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RIAA
> other sort of computer "crime".
Well, look at it this way...to the RIAA, people sharing music IS more dangerous than any other sort of computer "crime". It is just pitiful that congress listens to them.
I liked "Parental Advisory" on VH1 yesterday (I hate the RIAA as much as I hate the PMRC, and felt that the musicians were ultimately screwed), it showed very well that the RIAA has absolutely no interest in making it better for the artists, and will screw them over for profits any moment they can...($.01 per tape, no money to the artists, but a "plan" to distribute it.) And the movie gave me a much healthier respect for Frank Zappa, Dee Snider, and John Denver (I thought Alice Cooper was the only smart musician, but I guess there are tons of them out there, I just didn't know any better until last night.)
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Tired of Being the Bad Guy
Take for instance the assumption that file sharing has ruined their profit margins. I have always been an avid consumer of music. I have more CD's, Vinyl, and other such detritus filling my house than most large record stores. When file sharing was at it's hight, I bought more media than ever before. I was not the only one who did this by any stretch of the imagination. So to assume that Napster was the proverbial 'nail in the coffin' for the arist, is rediculous. Maybe this downturn in sales could be attributed to the quality of the current product?
Was there even any credible market research done to justify this or are recording companies just acting like Democratic Solcialists? We say it, therefore it is!?!
I guess this just goes to show you that it truly is an industry and has very little if anything to do with art. Maybe it never was. But you know, I would kind of like to think that there is another golden age on the horizon. Look at the ammount of independent lables that have sprung up since the file sharing bubble.
Hopefully there is a future, but I will say this with reserved certainty...I have bought my last title from a major label, and I am NOT a criminal for being a consumer.
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