Courts to RIAA: Get Bent!

While reading Serenity's Journal, (one of the lucky people who shook Seattle off her shoes and got the hell out), I ran across this little article.

The most devastating: a decision Friday that makes it more time-consuming and expensive to sue suspected music traders — which has been at the heart of the recording industry's campaign.

The new ruling means the current litigation "grinds to a halt," says Ohio State law professor Peter Swire. Since September, the Recording Industry Association of America has sued 382 individuals. Many settled for $1,000 to $7,000

The RIAA is nothing more than a music monopoly, and their control over the music industry is almost absolute. Right now they're losing flaming assloads of money due to file sharing. I've observed plenty of debates about the ethics of file sharing over at Right Thinking, but I've mostly stayed out of them. I don't buy many CD's to begin with. But here's my two cents for the RIAA.

You want to stop losing money? Stop producing UTTER AND COMPLETE CRAP! I refuse to listen to much of the pop music today, and I wouldn't listen to rap if you paid me. Here's a hint: If a person doesn't write their own songs, doesn't play any instrument, and can only sing with huge amounts of coaching by someone else, THEY ARE NOT ARTISTS! The music industry as focused so much on bullshit like "boy bands" and Brittany Spears clones that they've forgotten about the damn music! I can remember a couple of years ago, you had Brittany, Mandy Moore, Jessica Simpson, and a few other twits, who all sang bubblegum pop songs written by someone else, and played by someone else. The music sucked! It still sucks! "Good Charlotte"? Dear god, what crap! Gee, like I've never heard the ten-billionth "Green Day" clone before! I can find buskers down at Pike Place Market with more talent in their left pinky than "Good Charlotte" has in the whole damn band!

I have heard some of the best band ever while I was sitting in some bar having a beer. And yet the so-called music industry keeps following the fad of the month, putting some crap that looks good on stage while real musicians, real talent, sits and plays some back-alley bar. If the RIAA wants to make some money, stop shoveling the same regurgitated CRAP out of your factory and telling us it's "fresh", or "new". We're not stupid, and we're proving it by not buying assloads of your crap. That's most of what file-sharing is about. Nobody wants to pay $20 for some piece of shit CD that might have one or two good songs on it, and loaded with "filler" songs that nobody likes or gives a damn about. So one person buys it, rips the one or two good songs, and shares them. If the RIAA had pulled a move like Apple, and sold the songs one-at-a-time for 99 cents each, they'd be pulling in the bucks. But noooo, they have to continue to live in the stone age, demanding that the consumer change to fit the RIAA's schedual. Hey, fuck you, dipshits! You're behind the curve, selling shitty music, and then demanding that we like it? Piss off!

I have no sympathy for the RIAA. They've created their bed with their disregard for good musical talent and digital technology. Now they want to cry about it. As far as I'm concerned, they can all go bankrupt, and companies with the skills and forsight to produce good CD's will take their place. I truly hope that these lawsuits are the death knell of the music industry.