RIAA Succeeds in Prosecuting Layperson for Illegal Downloads.

I am all for protecting the digital rights of producers and musicians alike. In fact I believe what the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is doing is right. But come on, a single mother of two forced to pay a $220k fine? How is she going to pay for it all? To me I think it's all a bunch of grandstanding on the part of RIAA bullying these individuals on the behalf of some major corporations. Your basic David and Goliath and folks, David
is losing.

Read about it HERE from the Baltimore Sun

To be honest when CDs first came out the music companies were afraid that copies from CD to cassette tape would spell the end for the industry. They were wrong. In fact I am under the impression it helped bolster their business model. Why? If you like a group enough and get a bootleg copy of an album eventually if you really liked the group you would buy the legit
album for your library. Why continue to listen to a crappy copy when you can get a near original by buying a CD. The problem nowadays is quite simple. The industry is so niche oriented: so formula, that they really don't create enough buzz to be appealing to a broad base of niches. That is to say, what is someone's Nirvana is not necessarily the next guy's cup of tea. There, truth be told, hasn't been a cross-niche music artist since Michael Jackson (hate to say this) that really helped close the ranks of listeners.

The other thing is music downloads. Hey to me nothing wrong with having these huge libraries of music that took you two weeks to compile and categorize. Just make sure it's yours. Or if it isn't yours, make sure you don't brag about ripping it to everyone in creation. What you do on your time should be your business not the news story of every Tom, Dick and Harry news reporter. By the way if you're caught the fine is $10,000 PER OFFENSE That means each song that is a bootleg can be $10,000 EACH! Got that much money to burn? Go right ahead.

OK that was a little off-track but why has digital downloads spelled disaster for the music industry? They have to cut from a SMALLER pie. I believe the Apple iTunes store charges $0.99 a song. You get to pick and choose which song. Great for the consumer who can have what he wants a la carte. But terrible for the musician and music company that has to take his/her/its share from such a small pie. Plus an unprotected music file without the fancy DRM (Digital Rights Management) forensics to actually catch the culprits is essentially an unfettered original. It's digital after all; just 0's and 1's. It's an EXACT duplicate of the original file versus a dumbed down copy of a song copied from CD to tape.

Now I know what to listen for and even these digital copies ripped from a CD are a little bit off but if you download a copy from an iTunes store and somehow manage to remove the DRM you essentially have a pure, unadulterated original, that you can share with anyone in creation. How scary is that? Why even bother to buy a copy when you can surf the internet and locate these little nuggets and download it to your computer to be burned to disc later? After all isn't it all just electrons anyways? Isn't all just a bunch of magnetic pulses on your Hard Drive. It really isn't like you're stealing from a store right? Well wrong. Hate to burst your bubble. That spells disaster for the music industry my friends and that has go to somehow stop. That or they have to come up with better acts so it helps revive the already splintered music industry. Get a decent buzz going around, sure you will have your bootleggers but then also a whole lot more folks will reenter to market to make their purchases legitimately.

Now for those of you with these music files on your computer. Let me ask you this. Do you have a back up? What happens if your Hard Drive craps out and you're Shit-out-of-luck at restoring your data. Data after all is what turns your computer into a juke box instead of a desk cluttered. I bet you whoever reads this you don't have a back-up copy. If you do, kudos, you are perhaps 1 out of 20. I have one. Actually several but that is only because I am anal like that. What happens when you can't recover your data? What is your time really worth? I strongly suggest if you like the artist do not pass GO, do not collect $200 but go directly to your local music store and buy a legit copy for when "All Hell Breaks Loose."