The RIAA and MPAA have spent the last 10 years making every attempt at curbing the downloading of music and movies to the point of issuing hefty multi million dollar fines towards “offenders”. These racketeering actions have convinced even congress that the RIAA and MPAA have a case worth siding with and laws have been put in place to help protect these two organizations from evil fifteen year olds downloading their favorite songs. In fact, I think congress initally opted for the death penalty, but the RIAA and MPAA in all their mercy convinced congress to rethink that. After all a dead customer can’t buy anything. By the way, great move guys. CD sales are still at an all time low.
However, since the Musicrusade™ of the twenty-first century music has become the new scam product of scamming sites. There are thousands of sites that offer “legal” downloads of songs for a small start up fee of $30 to $60 and songs at 10¢ a piece. The problem though is that these sites are no more legal than downloading songs from torrents and in some cases these sites disappear shortly after taking your money with no access to any of the songs they advertised.
The Musicrusade™ solved nothing except helping the RIAA offset their profit percentages. None of the money won in these lawsuits goes to any off the artists they claim to protect and the notion that downloading music illegally steals from the artists is completely false. Since this copyright crackdown CD sales have continued to plummet and the downloading of music has, and will, continue… and untrackable.
I for one fully endorse the downloading of music. There has never been any evidence whatsoever to prove that music downloading hurts any artist or performer. CD sales were dropping long before the surge of internet downloading, and the drop has continued long after the mainstream downloading services have been blacklisted.
To go on a small tangent here, if you would like to know how ridiculous these laws are, according to the laws the RIAA pushed for, playing a CD in your car that you paid for rightfully with friends in the car who did not buy the CD is considered illegal since they are hearing their intellectual property without paying. Sounds ridiculous right? Well, that’s because it is.
Copyright law has become a new means of extortion from companies who do not know how to adapt to the changing times. Maybe CD sales have been dropping because they have been releasing a crappy product. There’s food for thought.
