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the riaa and the major labels that created it are working to defend an entire system of production and distribution that the net is making obsolete.
it is in part the fault of the major labels themselves that for example broadcast radio is collapsing as a primary system for creating demand for newer music: the creation of tightly formatted radio during the middle 1970s has resulted in the creative death of a series of genres by, for example, reducing the levels of contact between them.
it is the fault of the major labels themselves that cd rpices are and have remained as extortionate as they are.
it is not true that filesharing cuts into sales: most information i have seen on the subject tends to confirm what the previous two posters argue--that downloads are primarily ways for listeners to preview releases--which in the main they will still buy if they like it.
fair compensation in this context is a function of increasingly obsolete companies using an outmoded and unfair system of copyright law to fend off a future they cannot dominate. they wrap their arguments in ethical language, but there is nothing ethical about what they are doing. unless of course, you are of the persuasion that what exists is necessarily ethical because it exists, that what law inscribes as operational is necessarily ethical because it is legally instituted (like slavery, you know?--the position that what is legal and what is ethical are identical would have given none of us the space to oppose slavery even.)
the riaa has issued something in the area of 7000 cease and desist orders in the philadelphia region alone over the past 5-6 months. (this as of about 6 weeks ago) the vast majority of these orders have been issued to university students.
the riaa is not about artists, not about audiences: it is about record company profits and that's it.
like is said earlier, screw them, let these corporations drown.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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