RIAA Hits a Sour Note With Its File-Sharing Witch Hunt

[The Straight Story]

Snip---

The RIAA, after all, is the guardian of an industry so antiquated and oppressive that having sympathy for these guys is a little like feeling sorry for a Georgia slaveholder after watching Sherman's troops fire his mansion and scatter his livestock.

So when their first victim, Thomas, turns out to be a single American Indian mother of two making a measly $36,000 a year -- latte money for the RIAA boys -- you have a hard time picturing these guys nailed to a cross. But that's the image the RIAA has tried hard to foster since some pimply-faced intern first explained to them what file sharing was. All of a sudden it was, oh, boo-hoo. Poor us.

Cry me a river.

Here's an industry so bloated with executives and middlemen, all of them greedily slurping up profit like bluepoint oysters, that the people who actually write the songs and play the music -- the "talent" -- are getting royally screwed in the royalty department. It's been like that for years. The Dylans and the Stones of the world might be able to rise above it and name their price, but for the rank and file it's "Dance to our tune, or go back and rot in that crummy little club."

The usurious nature of the business is the main reason that the average CD, which at most costs a couple of bucks to produce, routinely sells for upwards of $20. Sometimes the songwriter makes out all right (forget about the singer or the musicians), but licensing and contracts have been sufficiently rigged by the boys in legal to ensure that the lion's share of the carcass goes to people who have absolutely nothing to do with the actual music.

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/commentary/theluddite/2007/10/luddite_1011

[Deja Q]

1. Piffle. The RIAA is a broken record; skips off the track and repeats the same dreary noise.

:hide:

My condolences to the talent. They usually get slagged in favor of monotonous bodies like Britney Spears.

[melody]

2. There needs to be an anti-mainstream-music strike

Let them see who the real power holders are.

[bluestateguy]

3. I haven't bought a CD in four years

I don't file share or download from bootleg sites--it contaminates the computer with all sorts of bugs--but I just walked away from buying CD's when the RIAA started this business.

[BlueJazz]

4. The average person has no idea of the little dirty deals the RIAA has pulled in the past.

They remind me so much of the Republican party and how they have fooled the public for years...

[msongs]

5. get even with RIAA -make your OWN music instead of ripping off somebody else's :-) nt

[Strelnikov_]

6. Reading those juror comments the other day

I can't help but wonder if her race was a factor. Wonder how they would have ruled if it was little blond Tri-Delt Ashley on trial.