{"id":365,"date":"2003-09-10T11:11:54","date_gmt":"2003-09-10T19:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/09\/10\/riaa-sues-12-year-old-girl\/"},"modified":"2003-09-10T11:11:54","modified_gmt":"2003-09-10T19:11:54","slug":"riaa-sues-12-year-old-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=365","title":{"rendered":"RIAA sues 12 year old girl"},"content":{"rendered":"

For those of you following the RIAA lawsuit, this article <\/a>notes that one of the evildoers the RIAA is suing for millions is a 12 year old girl.<\/p>\n

Seeing the RIAA get robbed by Napsterites is, well, kinda like watching those movies where someone steals millions from the mob. Does anyone feel bad for the mob<\/i>, watching those flicks? The RIAA has spent years robbing musicians and gouging consumers; they don’t have much moral credibility when they whine about their losses nowadays.<\/p>\n

Sure, stealing is wrong, but it’s hard to muster much sympathy for a burglar whose pockets have been picked.<\/p>\n

P.S. To cut off a predictable response: No, I don’t <\/i>download music from the internet. Too much bother for too little reward, or so it seems to me – but then, I’m not 12. When I was 12, the internet didn’t exist yet – but I did have a collection of hundreds of albums tranferred to casette tapes and traded between friends.<\/p>\n

P.P.S. I’ve always liked Janis Ian’s <\/a>articles on the subject: The Internet Debacle <\/a>and Fallout<\/a>.<\/p>\n

UPDATE<\/b>: Will Baude <\/a>thinks the comparison to the mob is “a little over the top.” With all respect, Will, I think “criticism by way of over-interpreting metaphors” is beneath you. Most folks understand that a metaphor comparing “A” and “B” isn’t the same as saying “A” is identical to “B” in every respect.<\/p>\n

Will writes:<\/p>\n

Wait a file-stealing minute. The RIAA may play hardball, but do they actually “rob” musicians, or do they just bargain for particularly tough contracts? And doesn’t price-gouging consumers (whatever exactly that means) damage one’s moral credibility a lot less than breaking their kneecaps or hitting them up with a protection racket?<\/div>\n

Let me ask some different (and I think more relevant) questions, Will.<\/p>\n

Do I think it’s immoral for a company to use a vastly superior bargaining position to exploit much poorer people, and thus gain ownership of work that the company didn’t create and doesn’t deserve ownership of? Absolutely. Do I think that music companies have taken advantage of their power and position to take virtually all of the profits from record and CD sales, giving an unfairly low share to creators? Absolutely. Do I think CD prices have been artificially inflated by collusion between music companies? Yes, I do. (And that’s what “gouging” means, Will.)<\/p>\n

When two parties negotiate – on one side, corporate music factories, who have a virtual monopoly over music distribution in this country; and on the other side, young, hungry musicians who are desperate to break into the music industry, and who have the choice of doing it the industry way or never doing it at all – the result is going to be vastly one-sided, unfair contracts.<\/p>\n

Do I care when the exploiters who have benefited for years from this dreadfully unfair system get robbed? No, I don’t. Frankly, they deserve every bad thing Napster has done to them and more. Given all the horrible things going on in the world, that a bunch of leeches like the RIAA is being robbed isn’t important enough to rate my concern.<\/p>\n

I also wrote about these issues a bit over a year ago<\/a>, and then again in January<\/a>..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those of you following the RIAA lawsuit, this article notes that one of the evildoers the RIAA is suing for millions is a 12 year old girl. Seeing the RIAA get robbed by Napsterites is, well, kinda like watching … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-site-and-admin-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}