Skip to main content

RIAA satire

The Onion always comes through with great satire. In honor of my post on MP3 blogs, here's a little blurb about the RIAA found in this week's Onion:

RIAA Bans Telling Friends About Songs
November 30, 2005
Issue 41•48

LOS ANGELES—The Recording Industry Association of America announced Tuesday that it will be taking legal action against anyone discovered telling friends, acquaintances, or associates about new songs, artists, or albums. "We are merely exercising our right to defend our intellectual properties from unauthorized peer-to-peer notification of the existence of copyrighted material," a press release signed by RIAA anti-piracy director Brad Buckles read. "We will aggressively prosecute those individuals who attempt to pirate our property by generating 'buzz' about any proprietary music, movies, or software, or enjoy same in the company of anyone other than themselves." RIAA attorneys said they were also looking into the legality of word-of-mouth "favorites-sharing" sites, such as coffee shops, universities, and living rooms.

I don't blame the RIAA for being afraid of peer-to-peer downloading and other forms of MP3 sharing. However, the year isn't 1999 anymore, where there was talk of a little program called Napster making the rounds on college campuses. The RIAA continues to combat piracy in 2005, but only alienating more people in the process. Isn't the point of all successful businesses to make the customer happy?

Several measures have been taken in trying to stop people from putting a CD into a CD-Rom drive and ripping songs from it into an MP3 format. So far, the most elaborate attempt has been via Sony's DRM program (which installs a program in one's computer after a CD is placed into a CD-Rom drive). With threats of viruses attacking computers with this program installed and a lot of pissed off listeners, Sony wisely recalled discs with the DRM feature.

My feelings on the matter have always been this: I bought it, so I can do whatever I want to do with it. If I love a particular track or album and want to share it with people via the Internet, that's my choice. This is about sharing by making the fences lower, not higher. To use the old cliche, the cat is out of the bag here. The technology is available to share music this way, whether it's seen as legal or illegal. Trying to put a stop to it only means that people will create ways to get around it. That's the power of a virtual world.

Comments

Kev said…
Great post; as you know, this is a favorite subject of mine. And the Onion story was hilarious.

Popular posts from this blog

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Catherine Wheel

Originally posted: Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 Despite managing to release five proper albums, Catherine Wheel was one of those bands that always seemed to slip past the mainstream rock crowd. Yes, they got some nice airplay in their day, but people seem to have forgotten about them. You may hear “Black Metallic” or “Waydown” on a “classic alternative” show on Sirius or XM or maybe even on terrestrial radio, but that’s about it. For me, they were one of most consistent rock bands of the ’90s, meandering through shoegazer, hard rock, space rock and pop rock, all while eluding mainstream pigeonholing. Led by the smooth, warm pipes of vocalist/guitarist Rob Dickinson (cousin of Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson), Catherine Wheel featured Brian Futter on lead guitar, Dave Hawes on bass and Neil Sims on drums. They weren’t a pretty-boy guitar band, but they weren’t a scuzzy bunch of ragamuffins either. Though the band hailed from England, Catherine Wheel found itself more welcome on American air

Best of 2021

  Last year, my attention span was not wide enough to listen to a lot of LPs from start to finish. Too much went on in 2020 to focus on 10-15 albums, so I went with only a couple to spotlight. Well, 2021 was a little better, as I have a list of top four records, and a lot of individual tracks.  (I made a lengthy Spotify playlist ) So, without further ado, here’s my list of favorites of the year: Albums Deafheaven, Infinite Granite (listen) Hands down, my favorite album of the year. I was not sure where Deafheaven would go after another record that brought My Bloody Valentine and death metal fans together, but they beautifully rebooted their sound on Infinite Granite. The divisive goblin vocals are vastly pared-down here, as are the blast beats. Sounding more inspired by Slowdive, the band has discovered a new sonic palette that I hope they explore more of in the future. It’s a welcome revelation. I still love their older material, but this has renewed my love of what these guys do.  J