Latest RIAA Shenanigans

It was only about 10 years ago that the RIAA was declared to be a cartel by the US Dept of Justice and found guilty of collusion for artificially inflating the costs of Cds. They were ordered to pay back consumers something in the neighbourhood of US $500 million. No one's ever tracked that money as far as I can tell.

Yet now today we are expected to believe that this is an organization that is no longer a cartel, no longer artificially inflating prices and no longer ripping off consumers.

OK.

If the execs at these chop shops have reformed their ways in this regard then they should get busy and go to some workshops or earn some music appreciation diplomas and learn some taste. The vast, vast majority of what they release today is utter crap. Re-releases of recordings from the 60s and 70s constantly out sell almost any new releases.

This is what happens when an industry that markets talent is run by bean counting MBAs with no talent and no idea what talent is or what it might sound like.

If The Beatles came along today they wouldn't even be signed let alone released by these bozoz!

Here's Pete Townsend of The Who writing in 2001 when he and his son sat down at their first high speed link and peeked into napster. "My son regarded what we did as illegal. He kept saying it was wrong to steal the music. I told him we were listening to it, just that. When we were finished we could trash it if he preferred. If he wants to fight for my rights he could call up BMI and ask them why my broadcast-related payments were so low during the years The Who were in the top 10 AOR playlists. He might ask them why during the 1989 Who tour, when we paid a huge sum of money to BMI for the right to perform songs I had written, they eventually paid me (after a lot of complaining from my manager) a tiny portion of that sum, excusing themselves because their main payout area that year was Nashville." Read it all.

The RIAA is a corrupt organization that creeps right up to the edge of being a racket - as in criminal conspiracy. That courts of justice anywhere cater to them in any way only implicates the courts in their corruption. Ask any musician. Ask anyone here.

I won't even get into the techno-peasantry involved in every single news report I've been able to find on this story that headlines the story as being about downloading when in reality she was found guilty of sharing - ie uploading.

"Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right..." (pace Gerry Rafferty)