Oh man, I was so ready to get all up in arms today. My arms were all set, seriously. It’s because of the fact that the R.I.A.A. – an organization whose main goal, it seems, is to suck our financial resources dry and then return to Planet Bigwig and laugh until the apocalypse – just convinced a jury to slap a 30-year-old single mother of two in Minnesota with a $220,000 fine for illegally distributing 24 songs.

So, knee jerk time – I get all enraged. Since music went digital – and we’re talking about CDs, here – the RIAA and its constituents have made somewhere in the ballpark of around $140 billion (source: RIAA site). Now, maybe it’s because I have yet to even make my first billion that this seems like an obscene amount of money to make in just 11 or so years. Now, the RIAA tries to blame the fact that their numbers have gone from $14.5 billion in 1996 to $11.5 billion in 2006 on peer-to-peer sites and dastardly music pirates.

Yeah, well – guess what, RIAA? You just lost an amount of money that I won’t even come close to making in my lifetime. In fact, from my grandparents to my grandkids, it’s unlikely our entire family will see that kind of dough. So yeah, boo-hoo, your business lost some scratch. Deal.

But much to the chagrin of my righteous indignation, neither side is really in the clear. Sure, Jammie Thomas says she didn’t do it, but that just means that her kids did. Or maybe she was on a file sharing site and accidentally marked those songs to be shared (that’s something that could easily happen). But there’s maybe a 0.001% chance that someone Jammie doesn’t know surreptitiously set up a P2P account on Jammie’s computer and traded songs without her knowledge. I mean, come on – her name’s “Jammie”.

But even so – 24 songs? Even if a million people of the 9 million P2P users out there downloaded all 24 songs, that’s… hold on… I can do this… $0.99 per song… no, wait, wait… $24 million. Right? Okay and… let’s say that the RIAA does really poorly this year and they only come in at the $5 billion mark. That would mean that Jammie would’ve cost them another half a percent of revenue? And let’s take into account that it’s very possible, regardless of what songs they downloaded from whom, these 1 million users may not have gone out to buy anything, period.

So then I was half up in arms, because the RIAA clearly isn’t hurting for cash, but then… $24 million is a lot of money. Still I was somewhat angry, so I said to myself “Self, what better way to restore the balance of power than to swear off purchasing from RIAA-affiliated artists and really hit them in the pocket book?” So I looked through my collection of music and… well, very little of it comes from RIAA-backed artists. Even the occasional “illegal” download of mine – not involved with the RIAA.

Then I read a bit of unsubstantiated news about how the AARC (an organization closely linked with the RIAA, but sort of vaguely not in a way that makes it seem like they’re a money laundering front) collects money from all sales of music CD-Rs, CD recorders, etc., and this money allegedly never gets to the artists. This infuriated me again! You mean we’re already paying for piracy and then you’re going sue us on top of that?

But the further I got into it, the more the argument wasn’t there – I don’t buy music CD-Rs. Who does? And I burn data CDs from my computer, while the surcharge the AARC collects is on dedicated audio CD burners. And so on. There may be a charge built into my iPod, but… meh.

So, all my thunder stolen and all my sail-wind absent, I wrote this here post.

But lest you think the RIAA isn’t totally overstepping its bounds and prosecuting needless claims, there’s this from Gizmodo:

The labels’ first witness, Jennifer Pariser, head of litigation for Sony BMG, offered testimony that pretty much encapsulates everything wrong with the way the RIAA sees things. When asked if it was wrong for consumers to make a single copy of music they’ve purchased, she responded, “When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.” Making “a copy” of a song you bought is “a nice way of saying ‘steals just one copy.’ “

For me, the fault for loss of profits lies with the major labels and the RIAA. If you don’t have the business sense to exploit a gigantic online market hungry for your product, it ain’t Jammie Thomas’ fault. Your business doesn’t deserve to survive. Period.