| Subject: Why boycott? They're just suing thieves. |
Author:
Betty
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Date Posted: 10:35:51 02/24/04 Tue
In reply to:
Betty
's message, "RIAA & goofy laws." on 17:09:22 02/01/04 Sun
There's been a lot of media buzz lately about the effect file sharing has had on the recording industry. Reporters local and national seem to look only to the RIAA's web site when writing about the most recent store closing or falling sales figure.
The RIAA talking points are that file sharing is responsible for recent sales losses, and that a file shared is a sale lost. This logic has resulted in lawsuits ranging upwards of $300 million against individual users. With yearly CD sales in the $14 billion range, this somewhat outlandishly suggests that one user was responsible for a 2.1% drop in industry revenue! What's more, the RIAA's own suggestion that some 60% of files shared on peer-to-peer networks are illegal music seems to be somewhat at odds with the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) claim that over 50% of file sharing is of copyrighted movies.
From the starting gate, it's clear that the RIAA plays fast and loose with the numbers. They obviously don't particularly care how close to the truth they come in justifying their attacks on file sharing -- and on file sharers. Those attacks culminated a few weeks ago in a bizarre collaboration between the RIAA, Pepsi, and Apple, the Pepsi and iTunes commercial that aired during Super Bowl XXXVIII. In the spot, a series of fresh-faced, contrite teenagers targeted by the RIAA (not actors; despite Pepsi's involvement, the RIAA wanted the Real Thing) are labeled incriminated, busted, accused, and charged -- oddly enough, not convicted or guilty.
A particularly presentable girl then puts on her best "I'm getting back at the man" face and tells the audience that she and her pals are going to keep downloading music for free, and suggestively wiggles her Pepsi in evidence.
So we've got Apple, whose co-founder, Steve Jobs, incidentally, lets his kids neither drink Pepsi nor watch TV commercials, and Pepsi teaming up to not only strike fear into the hearts of evil-doers, but also convince kids that they're somehow fighting the good fight by pouring more money and energy into the organization that's threatening them. This, it would seem, is more than enough to justify a boycott of RIAA-backed products.
In the end, though, the RIAA's lawsuits and PR machinations are just the subtext of a much larger issue.
The RIAA is the voice of the major players in the record industry. Its policies and legislative agenda reflect the goals of the companies that receive money whenever anyone buys RIAA-label CDs from the likes of Sam Goody, Fye, and Wal-Mart.
When you buy RIAA-label CDs, your money goes to support their lobbyists and their lawyers. Those legislative efforts are aimed at destroying independent music and eliminating consumer choice.
As an independent artist, I buy a lot of CD-Rs (blank CD media) to record my music. But of the cost of every CD-R I buy, 2% goes to the RIAA, a deal going back to blank cassette tape days designed to help cover the lost sales from illegal music copying. Have I ever received any of this money? No. But I bet you the Big Music labels have. I pay Blink 182, Madonna, Britney Spears, and U2 for the privilege of making a copy of my own music.
You should boycott CDs because RIAA is ripping off independent musicians.
You should boycott CDs because RIAA labels' contracts do more to destroy music than promote it: as Steve Albini, producer of Nirvana's "In Utero" describes it, a band that signs a standard industry contract and sells a quarter of a million albums will end up $14,000 in debt to the label, which will have profited $710,000.
You should boycott CDs because the RIAA shut down Internet radio for six months, until a groundswell of public outrage forced them to back down -- for now.
You should boycott CDs when the industry launches their pay-per-download music service (named, ironically, after the breakout file-sharing company Napster), and signs a deal with Penn State to force every student to buy music they don't want, and won't even be able to keep after they graduate. You should boycott CDs because Penn State's president is co-chair of the Committee on Higher Education and the Entertainment Industry, along with RIAA president Cary Sherman.
You should boycott CDs if you don't want to hand money to an organization that's tried to pass laws that would allow it to legally hack into your computer and destroy all MP3s you have -- legal or not, yours or not -- without any due process or potential recourse, and laws that would make it illegal to have a consumer electronics device that plays any kind of media without checking with the RIAA first to make sure it's OK -- essentially outlawing non-RIAA music.
That's why you should boycott not only RIAA-label CDs, but RIAA-backed music on Internet services like iTunes, Napster 2.0, and whatever soft-drink flavor of the moment e-music store has just opened up -- and you Mac aficionados don't even have to feel bad about costing Apple revenue. The RIAA takes so much of the cut from iTunes sales that Apple can barely pay the cost of uploading the file. Buy an iPod instead, before the US slams through legislation like that just passed in Canada slapping a $22 tax on all digital music players to "pay artists" -- no matter that no artists have ever seen a penny from such taxes (which are as high as 70 cents on CD-Rs, and which, if the Canadian Recording Industry Association had had its way, would have been $21 per gigabyte of hard drive space, jacking the minimum cost of a 200gb hard drive to more than four thousand dollars!) and that you might well have already paid for the music you put on your player.
It's hard to avoid every purchase whose proceeds might end up in the hands of RIAA lobbyists. If you own a Disney DVD, a Sony TV, visit CNN.com (owned by Time Warner), or buy a computer game from Papyrus, who are distributed through Sierra, who are owned by Vivendi, a RIAA label is getting your money. But the least we can do is hit the RIAA labels where the cut is the deepest and the statement the most obvious.
Until the music industry plays fair, it's time to stop supporting it.
When the next attack on fair use or free musical expression hits Congress, call your representatives and let them know that it's time for an alternative to the RIAA -- a system which can respect the right of artists to sell music on their terms and of consumers to listen to music on theirs.
Buy Indy
Boycotting Big Music doesn't have to mean giving up music. There's lots of great independent stuff out there! Here are some ideas of music to check out. Let us know if you have other suggestions!
I-Town Records
Pork Recordings
Warp Records
Stephanie Pakrul
Alan Rose
Sam Shaber
Bjorn Lynne
Marie Zemantauski
David Wiernicki
Ryan Montbleau
The Dent
Wingnut
Trout Fishing in America
Twiin
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