So today a jury found 30 year old Jammie Thomas guilty on 24 counts of music sharing. Exciting stuff. After reading a bit it was clear she really didn't have a leg to stand on. Her defense was that someone else used her system and IP address to share the music. I spose this is possible although I have never seen it. More likely she was one of the many retards of the world who downloaded Kazza Lite in hopes of getting free MP3s and didn't realize or wonder what it might be doing in the background while she was enjoying all those free tunes that were poorly ripped by 17 year olds with no aspiration for ever seeing the sun or touching a real girl. It's more likely that she ripped some tunes from a CD to her PC and Kazza grabbed them up like its known to do and shared them out. Too bad for her. But there's more than a few reasons Kazza is detected as spyware. So do I think she got what she deserved? Well.. yes and no. She tried to pirate music and she got caught. It happens. Do I think $220K in damages to Sony BMG is reasonable? Hell no. Do I think Pirating music is ok? No I don't. But that is actually a very convoluted issue these days.
I don't think its ok to steal, but I also don't think its ok to be gouged. And that is what the RIAA and the music cartels seem to be doing over and over. I personally am tired of giving the RIAA anymore money. Don;t get me wrong. I buy music. I buy it all the time. Most of it comes from independents. I buy CDs at shows, or from iTunes generally. But I can't honestly see myself buying a CD at Best Buy, Target, or god forbid WALMART. EEK! I just can't do it. The music industry just keeps screwing the public. They don't care about making a quality product what so ever. If they did, they would be signing any number of the millions of eclectic musicians around the world who produce fantastic music of all kinds. Most of them will never get signed because lets face it, they don't sound like the current band dujour. So they sign bands, shove crappy throw away music down our throats and then go onto the next. There's no sense of art or the musical experience. Just a product aimed at selling as many copies as possible as fast as possible. They cease to be artists and become product builders. And the RIAA isn't making things any easier. What with DRM, different digital file types, fly by night music subscription services, and what not. How can we continue to enjoy the music and not worry about all the BS that comes with it? And for that matter pay a reasonable (to the consumer) price for it? With all the restrictions they keep trying to impose on music to keep people from copying it, its pretty much turned into hell. They constantly blame the consumer for their reduced profits. Well duh! make a better product and price it reasonably and we'll buy it. It's that simple. The RIAA has their heads so far up their ass's they literally think the only way to get their profits up is to charge more money. Well that doesn't work for the consumer. So they turn to pirating cause lets face it, who thinks $17.99 for a CD is worth it for one damn hit song? So then the record cartels claim that all the pirating causes them to lose profits. So they run out and think up ways to stop it. All the while not focusing on the one important thing... Good product at a reasonable price.
Remember the Sony Root Kit/spyware fiasco? Software that rendered thousands of PC inoperable cause Sony used hidden software to stop people from copying CDs? Sony got nailed to the wall big time on that. But they still think that even ripping a CD to your iTunes is pirating even if you already own it. In the case aga
inst Jammie Thomas, Jennifer Pariser, the head of litigation for Sony BMG, was quoted as saying "When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.' Making 'a copy' of a purchased song is just 'a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy." So basically according to Sony, we are ALL pirates. It seems they would have us rebuy every song we own again just to get the digital form. Talk about gouging. So now they go out searching for pirates and suing them as lessons to the rest of us. David Hughes, RIAA's senior vice president, called it "education through litigation." So we are all guilty and all pirates. I think you get the idea as to why I am so pissy with the Music Moguls. Back in the 80s when CDs came out. they were uber costly. Even though the music industry insisted they would grow cheaper, they did not. We know for a fact that a CD with jacket case and artwork costs around $0.80 to produce in quantities. And thats probably conservative. When asked what we were paying for, we were told it was for the art of the music. Well considering even back in the days when you could buy singles on one of those mix tape machines for $.99 the recording industry has pretty much pegged a song price around a buck. So where's all the extra money going? For a $17.99 CD thats $7 extra bucks. You can't have me believe that money goes to the artist, or the store selling the product, Shipping, packaging, marketing, yadda yadda. Is all just a sham to empty our wallets so stuffed shirts can have their Cuban cigars and fast cars. Well I for one am done with this garbage. I'll buy music from the cartels again when they actually treat their consumers like customers, not criminals. I am not advocating piracy, nor am I saying I am going to pirate my music. There are plenty of fantastic independent musicians out there that want our business. Lets give it to them
