Music and the RIAA

I’m not a big music fan. I don’t buy it. I don’t go to hear it live. I don’t download it. I don’t covet an I-pod.

But, I’m fascinated by the RIAA’s assinine insistence on prosecuting 13 year olds who downloaded their favorite tunes. The thing they don’t seem to grasp is that technology does not go backward – only forward.

I-pod makers understand this. They figured out how to make money from it. Lots of money. Now the RIAA is thinking that their cut isn’t enough.

I suspect this has less to do with that money and more to do with how record companies always have all the sales figures whenever there’s a dispute with an artist. Isn’t that convenient how that works out?

Today I opened PC Magazine and saw Dvorak’s editorial about this very thing. Well, OK, his piece is much better written and more thoughtful than mine and more detailed – and he never used the word “assinine” – but the gist is similar.

I did a quick search and found it’s online at: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1862166,00.asp