You’ve Won The Lottery. Now, Do You Buy A House Or A Song?…
The RIAA continues their ridiculous strangle-hold on people who download music. One of the better examples of this is the case they launched against 30-year-old Jammie Thomas in October. Allegedly, Jammie used the P2P file sharing program Kazaa in order to download copyrighted material from the artists. Nothing out of the ordinary so far (unless you count the fact that she used the shittiest downloading engine available at the moment). What is very troublesome, however, is what the courts have decided regarding how much the RIAA are allowed to sue for. In this case, $222,000.
You read that correctly, $222,000 for a small amount of songs (24 I believe). The story goes like this: single mother with an annual income of less than $35,000 gets sued by the RIAA for downloading songs via Kazaa. The case is settled in court in the RIAA’s favor. The case is then taken to the Department of Justice to contest the ruling but sadly, the ruling stays. In the end, the Department of Justice agreed that $9,250 per song is a viable price to quote in a case like this. So now this single mother with an annual income of less than $35,000 is forced to somehow come up with $222,000 in an effort proposed by the RIAA to “deter” any future “pirates”. Uh, yeah. Makes perfect sense.
The RIAA needs to stop this insane crusade they are trying to spearhead. Look, there isn’t a youthful soul alive that doesn’t download music these days. Do they really think this absurd case will stop people from becoming “pirates”? All this is going to do is deter people from downloading from Kazaa. It’s been said a million times before, but you can’t stop online downloading. You attack one site for allowing it, a hundred more will pop up later that day. The fact that the RIAA are wasting the amount of money that they are just trying to “deter” this unstoppable aspect of the industry is just sad.
Gene Simmons and that disaster area he calls his face recently claimed that the only people downloading his music are “pimple-faced thieves”. Simmons acts like all of the downloading of music is being done by a small group of teenage bandits, roaming cyberspace in order to steal directly from the artist’s pockets. Let’s make this clear: EVERYONE DOWNLOADS! The people that take the time to download Simmons’ shitty music are his fans. That’s who’s doing it. Some of them probably have pimples, I’m sure, but they are KISS fans all the same. So, in essence, he is slamming his own fans by saying these things. Don’t think for a second that the people in the audience of a KISS show have never attempted to download the music. (It’s also funny to me that the guy saying this is in a band that has done everything in their power to extort as much money from their fans as possible.)
Saying online downloading is something that can be avoided and prevented is along the same lines as saying time travel and world peace are possible. They are all impossible dreams and can never be attained. So, the RIAA keeps attacking these helpless victims because, well, they know they’re helpless. It’s an easy case to prove a point with. Which is really all this is about. The RIAA and the courts know, I’m sure, that they can’t logically stop online downloading and file sharing for good. Instead, they choose to sue single mothers with annual incomes less than $35,000 for seven times what they’re worth (financially) and claim it’s a valid argument. They know it’s unfair and they know it’s ludicrous. This, to me, is the worst part about these cases. Taking up this much time and effort for something that is only really fueling your own big-headed fantasy seems grossly unconstitutional. But, in that respect I guess it makes it a perfect fit given the current state of the music industry.
By the way, please visit www.freejammie.com. It has various ways to support Jammie Thomas and help stop the RIAA (which, in all likelihood, is another impossible dream). It has some pretty sweet tees too, brah.
