Political Humor | I Hate the RIAA

Thanks to Tyler D. for hooking me up with this link.

Satellite radio irks record industry

The article is about RIAA taking on satellite radio for allowing users to record music from their satellite services. What really floored me was this paragraph though:

Illegal song trading has been blamed by the record industry for declines in sales, and labels have become increasingly aggressive in their legal battles to defend their product. Now that focus includes portable players.

Here we have a perfect example of RIAA demonstrating their complete stupidity and lack of understanding of customer relations. I remember CDs selling for $18 and $19. Could that have hurt sales? How about how the industry fought every aspect of technology, and the ability to download music - could that have hurt sales? Now they don’t even want us to rip mp3’s off of the CDs we buy - could that be hurting sales? Some bands are so pissed about how user-unfriendly their music is that they are posting instructions on how to beat the copy protection on their websites. So now it’s time for RIAA to attack technology once more, rather than embracing it.

Ever since there was first word of music downloading, and Napster was a new word in the vocabulary, I couldn’t imagine why RIAA wanted to oppose the idea instead of setting up a way to buy downloads. It wasn’t until the industry was nearly in ruins that they got with the program to accept it, and they also lowered the price of CDs. So they finally start to rebound and they have to find a new aspect to demonize.

Note to RIAA:

If you can listen to it, you can run it through your sound card, if you can do that, you can record it as a wave file. (Do you think that’s why they are cracking down on streaming audio too? Duh.) Once that stage is reached, all bets are off. Screw you RIAA!

Linked on: Stop the ACLU, Mudville Gazette, Jo’s Cafe, Cafe Oregano

RIAA, Copyright, Piracy, technology