Recording Industry Makes More Friends

The RIAA filed 41 more lawsuits against music file-sharers, including one against a 79-year-old retiree who doesn't even have a computer. Apparently, the retiree's son-in-law briefly added Internet service to the man's cable bill because the cable company wouldn't send two separate bills to the same address.

Look, RIAA, we know how you feel about file-sharing. We know it's costing your members and artists money. We know it's illegal.

Is this the right way to change people's minds about it? Suing little old men? Suing parents who have no idea what their teenagers are doing? Yeah, let's just sue the ass off the whole world, because it's all about money, isn't it, you rapacious...

Ahem. OK, I feel better now.

What would serve the RIAA and the recording industry better, and make more friends, and perhaps more money in the long run, would be an acknowledgement by both users and artists that, yes, this has gone on in the past, no, it's not right, but we'll set up an amnesty, and an absolute deadline date -- say, perhaps March 1, 2004, to give everyone 90 days' notice -- that after said date, illegal downloads will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and we'll also set up ways for people to download individual songs for a reasonable price.

The agency and the recording artists themselves, many of whom have been horrified by the tactics of the RIAA, will make much more money that way and stop pissing people off. Can you imagine any of the sued parties ever buying another CD? I can't.

This, my friends, is life in the USA in the 21st Century.