RIAA deal a sham

Here's a hypothetical: You are a file-trader, and you are going to burn in hell for downloading copyrighted material. The bad news is that you are going to burn in hell. The worse news is that you can be sued by the Recording Industry Association of America if you are caught. But there is good news. Repent and you shall be saved, at least from the RIAA, or so it claims.

Rumor has it that before unveiling a list of 261 criminal masterminds - including a 12-year-old girl and a 71-year-old grandfather - from a yet-to-be-disclosed list of more than 1,600 illegal file-sharers, the RIAA offered an amnesty program to those who had not yet been sued. By the terms of the program, file-sharers have to basically confess to the Man that they were in fact stealing music, beg for forgiveness, wipe the stuff off their hard drives and promise to never, ever do it again.

Of course, this being the RIAA, there are some problems with the program - the greatest one being that you can still be sued.

The amnesty contract is signed specifically with the RIAA, which is merely a mouthpiece for the major labels. In other words, because the RIAA does not actually own any copyrights, there is nothing preventing the actual copyright holders, like Sony or BMI, from suing you. On top of that, record companies that do not belong to the RIAA or individual artists who own the copyrights to their songs - Metallica, for example - can still sue you.

And so can the RIAA. Confused yet? The RIAA can sidestep its own contract by merely charging you with something other than copyright infringement, like electronic theft.

If you are one of the approximately 1,400 people who have not been sued yet but are on RIAA's to-sue list, you are not eligible for the amnesty program. The problem here is that there is no way of knowing whether you are on the list. Suppose you apply and you are on the list. You have just admitted that you are guilty and have lost all bargaining power, so you would not be able to get off light like the 12-year-old girl, who settled for the infinitely generous plea of $2,000.

Obviously, the RIAA is not concerned with the bad press it is getting. If it was, it would not be suing 12-year-olds. And that is only part of the problem. The situation has reached the point where the only way consumers can voice their contempt for the record companies - and how they screw over artists and jack up CD prices - is to hit them in the pocketbook. After all, that does seem to be the only thing they worry about.

The typical sob story the RIAA tells is that downloading music is really stealing from an artist. What it does not mention is that record companies steal a lot more from artists than a typical downloader. A big name artist takes less than 10 percent of the price of every CD sold. In fact, less well-known artists who sign to major labels often wind up in debt to their record companies. Honestly, if you want to support an artist, go to his or her show and buy a T-shirt or something, since that is the greatest source of cash for most artists - not some corporate bastard with a bad tie and fake Armani suit.

So when you download music, you are actually stealing from the heavily lined pockets of the record companies. Excuse me while I shed a tear. They have stolen from artists and consumers by keeping down paychecks and jacking up prices for far longer than the Internet has been around, with the average CD costing close to $20, less than $2 of which usually goes to the artist. If anything, the RIAA owes us.

All hope is not lost for the RIAA to return from the dark side. As of Oct. 1, all CDs put out by Universal Music Group, with the exception of double CDs and special sets, will have a suggested retail price of $12.98. Universal is the largest record company, with nearly 30 percent of the market, which is a good sign for the rest of us, since the other companies will probably follow suit to stay competitive.

Perhaps they are slowly getting the message. Until they do, keep trading, just to make sure. Just know that you will not be getting any of my "completely legal" files, since I don't want to be sued. €¢

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