First of all, my disclaimer, I do not endorse pirating music any more than I endorse shoplifting or any other type of theft. I am not a pirate. I do not file share and do not endorse it.
I do buy used CDs however; this would make me by the Gestapo standards of the RIAA a co-conspirator. I also copy music off my CDs and burn mixes. I even copy music to my hard drive to listen to. So, according to the Gestapo, I am a pirate.
I am aware that the RIAA has gone as far as to bot the web and look for any and all sites to see if they have MP3s on them. I have already ranted about how wrong that is. But I really have to hand it to them; they hire a suave, connected politician and proceed to bend every right of the individual.
The police are given authority to search and seize with due cause and process by the laws of the nation and states. The police can not search every house in a drug riddled neighbor hood in case they might have drugs. The IRAA is not a government agency. They are not granted any authority by the states or nation. Yet they feel they have the right to crawl the web and search every server? How is that different than privacy invasion and spam?
Of course this is far easier than trying to hack the security of a pirating site. And it certainly looks good to those in favor of the cause of the RIAA. I mean why spend all that litigation money going after a Napster-like entity when we can target teens and college kids? I mean why go after some one who has money for a defense when we can look good by forcing a college sophomore to settle for 12 grand. Certainly his 17000 MP3s by bands I never heard of cost them as much.
To add to it they are no longer targeting the entities that encourage the pirating but going after the pirates themselves. Now I would readily concede that there is no real base not to. But they are not doing so to fight for the cause they are only doing so to have the appearance of such. It looks like they are serving those artists they protect Right?
I mean all those artists they shower in recoupables and give pennies on the dollar to for their sales. Right? After all they were sure awfully upset over MC Hammers debt problem and I am sure they lost just as much money in sales trying to help him out as they did to lost sales due to that college kid. And I am supposed to believe it is about the copyright right? (hehe)
Yeah, it's a perfectly logical choice, if you're a politician. The RIAA can't afford to go after the big guys, they need to protect their sales (not the artist's), they need to look good and the means justify the ends. Lets go after the typically poorly secured college networks, let's go after the young who are more enthralled with the technology than the infringement, let's forget about the fact that there is no way the kid could ever afford to buy 17000 songs but might have bought ten due to the exposure, let's sue the kid for every infringement and say we got the artist's money, let's go out there and look good for the cause and lets make sure we keep our pocket books full instead of the artists we are supposed to represent.
Isn't a copyright supposed to protect the artists? Be real; get a clue and wake up to the coffee aroma in the air. They are NOT about the copyright. They are about the industry. They are not, in any shape or form, doing this for the artist they are doing this to protect their own bottom line. If they were about rights, wouldn't they care about individual rights?
They are not about what they claim. They feel no remorse in the tactics they use. They are only trying to look good\. But, for now, I am weary Lucky for them more on this later.
