p2pnet news view | RIAA News:- Last month, p2pnet ran an amended version of the RIAA’s Mission Statement.

Now, in Part Deux of The RIAA as it Really Is, we present the updated version of the organ’s Piracy: Online and on the Street »»»

It’s commonly known as piracy, but it’s a too benign term that doesn’t even begin to adequately describe the toll corporate music theft takes on the many artists, songwriters, musicians, record label employees and others who have the misfortune to be involved with one or other of Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG.

Hard work and great talent make music possible in spite of the efforts of the Big $ and their extortion units such as the RIAA (Recording Industry Assholes Association).

Corporate music industry theft can take various forms:

• Record companies around the world who build businesses by stealing from artists they’re supposed to be supporting
• Corporate criminals manufacturing mass numbers of CDs for sale in retail outlets and online, returning a mere pittance, if anything, to the bulk of originators.

Across the board, until the advent of the Net, this blatant theft hurt the music community. Now, however, artists and performers are able to break into the business with their own sites and other online enterprises, completely bypassing the corrupt Big 4 record labels.

One PR puff-piece by the Institute for Policy Innovation concludes global music piracy causes $12.5 billion of economic losses every year, 71,060 U.S. jobs lost, a loss of $2.7 billion in workers’ earnings, and a loss of $422 million in tax revenues, $291 million in personal income tax and $131 million in lost corporate income and production taxes.

p2pnet described the above study as hogwash, eliciting an angry, and ill-considered, response from Policy Innovation spokesman Tom Giovanetti.

Said a p2pnet reader in reference to the above »»»

Consider what this would mean if it were true: 12 billlion dollars and 300 million Americans. That means that every man, woman and child, every tiny baby, every 100 year old nursing home patient, every prisioner, every soldier OWES the record industry 40 bucks!

And thats just music. Surely the movie industry, software, and game producers could generate a similar report.

Then there are the lesser crybabies: books, phony handbags, duff Rolex watches, Chinese designer clothing, etc, etc., By the time everybody releases their reports, every last American OWES the “economy” several hundred bucks. This money would come right outa our pockets and into the coffers of ‘the economy’. So let’s bankrupt the nation for the sake of those poor starving cartels.

Isn’t that what their balony report boils down to?

In its anti-piracy, anti-P2P, anti-consumer policy statement, in support of the kind of nonsense routinely pumped out by Big 4-friendly unit such as IPI, the music industry has  been forced to employed a multi-faceted approach of blackmail, extortion, pseudo-education and corruption, ie »»»

• The RIAA is continuing its efforts to portray simple copyright infringement as a serious problem, causing long delays in civil court systems and suborning law enforcement agencies paid for by American citizens as corporate copyright cops
• It is continuing its efforts to brainwash fans about the value of music and the wrong ways to acquire it by, whenever possible, terrorising innocent men, women and children across America
• Record companies and their hundreds of digital partners continue to ignore the fact P2P and file sharing are here to stay and instead of recognizing them as the primary promotion, sales, marketing distribution systems of the 21st digital century, do everything in their power to maintain the same outmoded business models which were in urgent need of revision as far back as the 1970s.

The RIAA goal is to: annihilate any and all signs of competition, no matter how trifling; and, to reduce American music lovers to the status of drones willing to mindlessly accept whatever  formulaic product its masters, Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG, care to dish out, and at whatever price.

No need to stay tuned.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 3:19 pm and is filed under RIAA News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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