The RIAA are Bad People
According to the Washington Post, the RIAA has officially entered into litigation based on their stance that it’s illegal to copy a CD onto a computer. That’s right: according to the Recording Industry Association of America it is against the law to rip a CD to MP3s for the purpose of personal use.
It has long been established that fair use allows for the creation of personal copies of media content primarily as back-ups. Fundamentally the reasoning is that individuals should not be penalized for shoddy manufacturing. If you buy a CD that’s been pressed by one of the lowest bidders big companies love so much and the piece of crap loses fidelity after a few uses you shouldn’t be forced to buy more shitty product. Fair use says that you can make yourself a backup copy in order to archive your legally purchased media. Now the RIAA wants to take that away from people because -gasp!- their policy of suing grandparents and treating customers like criminals isn’t actually working. I can’t imagine why.
The RIAA is full of crap. They want to control the distribution and display of every form of media because they see their bottom lines dwindling due to dark-ages business practices. Media and content become part of the fabric of our culture - certainly the content creators deserve compensation for their hard work, as do producers and distributors - and as such this media needs to be available to people in a reasonable and timely manner.
Music is an especially powerful emotional force. People define themselves with their music and it instructs so many aspects of life and personality. If music is not available for people to embrace through “legitimate” means then they will find other ways to experience it. Right or wrong none can argue that it’s inevitable. In a certain light the RIAA has a responsibility of sorts that they have shirked in order to make a buck. Fuck them.
Here’s the bottom line: if I buy a CD then I’m going to rip the songs to my computer and add them to my MP3 archive. I’m allowed to do that, whatever the RIAA says. Fuck them, they’re a group of money-grubbing assholes who have no concern for anyone but themselves and their economic problems are the inevitable consequence of their disgusting, bloated lives.
Sphere It