Wednesday, September 10, 2003

so i guess there was a meeting a few days ago at the RIAA and they were all like, "ok, what could make our image more appealing to the general public and really make people who share music files on the internet look like deplorably evil ner-do-wells?" Then some really smart guy was like "I'VE GOT IT! LETS SUE A 12 YEAR OLD GIRL!"

this whole RIAA thing is such a joke. oh, and if you've been a bad little citizen and would like to fess up to your blasphemous crimes of STEALING copyrighted materials from those honest, hardworking record companies that are just trying their darndest to break even, you can sign up for the RIAA amnesty program (dont forget to sign and notarize your "Clean Slate Affidavit"). right ... like i'm going to do that. you're going to have to come get me fuckers. right now i'm burning metallica cd's that i'm going to go hand out on the corner and i'm listening to the new outkast record that isnt out yet. suck my balls.

this whole thing just makes me want to download more music, buy less cd's and figure out more ways i can do my best to fuck over the RIAA. no one is going to kill any legitamately good bands career by downloading their material from the internet. you might break the record companies and the RIAA, but everyone knows the real money for the actual bands comes from touring, selling merch and all that other crap. The average recording artist is lucky to get $2 of the $16-$18 retail CD price. David Lee Roth makes a whopping 30 cents for every Van Halen CD that sells (at least the ones he was on). Incubus' last contract gave them $1.86 per CD. At the same time, the recording industry has given out more than $20 billion over the last 5 years in physical products that were never sold nor returned. The artists paid for these free goods, which are called "promotional" copies (this information comes from fairforshare.com which is now gone, but you can look at googles cached version here) ... you can check out an example of the royalty breakdown here. its the ASCAP website, so i doubt those numbers are wholly accurate.

straight from the horses mouth: The Problem With Music; By Steve Albini -- from the baffler.

subscribe to the cause
http://www.boycott-riaa.com

someone should really hack the RIAA website and put up a page with nothing but links to mp3's of songs from RIAA backed labels and bands. that would be great. that person should then get a medal from the president for putting a stop to stupid bullshit.

p.s. if you buy metallica records you're supporting communism. metallica killed jesus.