The RIAA - Scumbags of the Weak

College kid Joel Tenenbaum had just been ordered to pay $675 , 000 to 4 record labels for downloading 30 songs off of Limewire - a whopping $22 , 500 per track . and once again the large record labels have alienated their target audience in an EPIC fashion . I will explain why here before you politically-correct asskissers jump down my throat ....

Now , we all know that file sharing can be either illegal or legal depending on what content is transmitted , and while it seems like a new idea to a lot of people , it has actually been around for about 30 years and the MP3 file format is old enough to vote . People have been using this technology for a very long time as well as tape-swapping , which made a large percentage of rap and metal artists very wealthy in the 80's and early 90's through concert proceeds . Metallica , the whiny bitch of the P2P era would not exist as we know them without tape-sharing , but like many people who become pampered stars , they forgot where they came from and attacked P@P services like Napster as a "criminal enterprise" . Now , here is where most of the plaintiffs are ridiculous - bands like Limp Bizkit , Rammstein , Funker Vogt and others have seen the direct feduciary benefits of being shared online by college kids who then spend their post-grad big bucks on uber-concerts , CD's , Vinyl and merch . At least half of the bands I have discovered have been via P2P networks and I own products related to EVERY SINGLE ONE of these artists - if it weren't for these networks I likely never would have heard of some of my favourite smaller acts , and all in all , I do not feel the least bit criminal for having used such things in the past to broaden my musical horizons . My brother spends $15-20 ,000 annually on concerts and records and he does the same thing now that I did - call it "try-before-you-buy" , if you will .

Attacking your target young and educated audience will result in nothing but alienation . Remember Metallica who benefitted so handsomely via tape-sharing? While they do attract some sales and concert-goers , their self-obsessed whining and disconnection from their fans has cost them financially in a very massive way . I do know what it is like to have your intellectual property pirated , but this is not about some asshole in China selling millions of counterfeit albums , it is about RIAA greed and bitterness that they cannot go after the REAL criminal element so they have to force into bankruptcy some of our best and brightest young kids . This has no benefit to the reputation of the RIAA and is an unneccessary stain on the reputations of the individual artists who are frequently opposed to these attacks on the hand that feeds .

Oh , and last month the RIAA was awarded $1.92 million in a judgment against a young divorced mother for 24 - as in 2 dozen - downloads and the RIAA is petitioning Congress to charge radio airplay royalties .