The RIAA and MPAA both want us all to believe the following “truths” about who they are and what they do:

• All file-sharing is illegal
• Piracy is destroying the music and movie industries
• Their lawsuits against American citizens are intended to punish hardened criminals and protect the artists that produce the music and movies being “pirated”
• Colleges are the root of all that evil

Now, let’s look at the reality:

• File-sharing is most certainly not illegal in a wide variety of situations
  • Buying a music CD, ripping it to MP3 (or FLAC, etc.), and distributing it to others on the internet is a violation of Copyright law (that the RIAA and MPAA purchased in the form of the DMCA back when Clinton was president), and so is just downloading a movie, CD, or even a single song. It is not, however, “theft,” as the content cartel is so keen to claim
• Piracy is barely a blip on the radar — declining quality and increasing alternate “entertainment” options are what’s killing the industries, although “killing” is the wrong word since both the music and movie industries are in the black, just seeing smaller profit increases in recent years (yes, all this bitching and whining is about a decrease in the rate of growth of profit)
• They’re suing children, grandmothers, and single-parent households, demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars just for “pirating” a handful of songs
• They’ve admitted they exaggerated their claims that college students are responsible for most piracy

Given that they’re actively trying to reduce royalties paid to artists per album sold, something tells me they’re not being completely honest. Oh, and they’re still gunning for colleges and universities, having gotten a whole bunch of controversial “forced filtering” nonsense added to a recent funding bill. Finally, now they want to bring you anti-virus software that screens your downloads for “unauthorized music” and rumors abound that they’re eager to shovel spyware onto your computers as well, just to inspect everything to make sure you’re being “compliant.” I chuckle at the notion of an RIAA thug trying to figure out how to write something like this for a Linux box, then trying to convince me to willingly install it

Meanwhile, the independent music scene is thriving, and it’s quite possible to enjoy all sorts of music without ever paying an RIAA cartel member.

Remember this, the next time you’re standing at a store, thinking about whether to buy a music CD:

• You’re funding the lawsuits brought against college students, single mothers, children, grandmothers, and other lower- and middle-class Americans — the RIAA has yet to bring even a single lawsuit (or even a threat) against any wealthy individual or organization, for fear of having a legitimate legal challenge to their tactics crush the entire scheme
• You’re not helping the artists — the RIAA wants to pay artists less than $0.06 per album sold, down from the whopping $0.09-$0.12 per album they pay now. That’s right — that $15 price tag? Less than one percent of it lands in the artist’s pockets.
• Companies are working very, very hard to find ways to cripple your computers, CD and MP3 players, and even car stereos, to ensure that you can’t ever copy their precious discs. The fewer of these discs you buy, the less motivation these people will have to screw with hardware that isn’t theirs.

Just don’t do it, folks. Buy it used if you must buy it at all, but otherwise, just download the songs you like and skip the cruft. Support artists directly by buying tickets to shows (as long as they’re getting a good chunk of the profit) and merchandise, or by buying albums straight from the artists you like.

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