Sending a message to the commoner

Minnesota woman ordered to pay $220,000 for downloading music

Right now, if you listen closely, you can hear the sound of clinking champagne glasses, as Sony, BMG, Arista, Interscope, UMG, Capitol and Warner, with the help of their Eichmanns at the RIAA, toast another conquest over the common folk. While they continue to reap exorbitant sums of wealth off the backs of those deemed "marketable", a young woman living paycheque to paycheque is now forced to pay $9,250 for each of the twenty-four songs she allegedly downloaded. I doubt very much of that money will make its way to the artists themselves.

Perhaps it's time to rinse out the old cassette player and rekindle the tape-trading practice of the 1980s and 1990s, before the digital exchange made it more convenient. Perhaps my memory serves me incorrectly, but I don't seem to recall record executives lining up behind the RIAA to sue people left and right for possessing tape-recorded copies of their favourite albums. The irony of it all is - we seem to see irony rear its snickering grin consistently through human existence - Metallica, the band who, in 2000, alongside Dr. Dre, spearheaded the crusade against the sharing of music digitally, gained popularity through the practice of (yes!) tape-trading in the early 1980s.

Of course, don't expect the RIAA to represent the interests of any independent musical acts who struggle, by and by, to get their music heard by the masses. It's not as if they make music people want to hear: we might want to hear them were we not bombarded by radio stations and advertising telling us what music we ought to like. Perhaps they, too, would reap the benefits Metallica did a quarter of a century ago had more people been exposed to their creations. Even if these artists did feel they were being short-changed, it's not as if they can afford to utilize the legal channel.

Let this be a lesson to all of you: if you displease your corporate overlords, you will pay, and you will pay dearly, even if they have to garnish your already meager wages for the rest of your miserable life. These record executives work long and hard to exploit artistic talent for their own monetary gain, and they will be damned if you scrape so much as a copper penny from their coffers.