Moby: The RIAA Needs To Be Disbanded

ban-the-riaaMoby reacted to the nearly $2 million judgment against Jammie Thomas-Rasset of Minnesota for file sharing 24 songs yesterday, calling for the RIAA to be disbanded:

argh. what utter nonsense. this is how the record companies want to protect themselves? suing suburban moms for listening to music? charging $80,000 per song?

punishing people for listening to music is exactly the wrong way to protect the music business. maybe the record companies have adopted the ‘it’s better to be feared than respected’ approach to dealing with music fans. i don’t know, but ‘it’s better to be feared than respected’ doesn’t seem like such a sustainable business model when it comes to consumer choice. how about a new model of ‘it’s better to be loved for helping artists make good records and giving consumers great records at reasonable prices’?

i’m so sorry that any music fan anywhere is ever made to feel bad for making the effort to listen to music.

the riaa needs to be disbanded.

$2 million for sharing three albums worth of songs is clearly insanity.

Using your public user ID to share music illegally, covering up your tracks by replacing your computer’s hard drive, lying about it and then not settling out of court when you’ve got no case is insane, too.

There are going to be a lot of musicians that say they don’t want to be any part of this insanity.

If Moby really wants to make the RIAA irrelevant, though, he should follow the example of Nine Inch Nails, whose free albums releases and Creative Commons licensing have led to huge sales.

12 thoughts on “Moby: The RIAA Needs To Be Disbanded

  1. I think this is going way too far, the RIAA isn't even a government agency and yet it can search your person, business, snoop your hard drives for no reason but to look for music you may or may not have paid for? I do believe that we are protected by that kind of thing by this piece of paper called the constitution.

    if 14 songs is enough to get you fined 2 million dollars, what about these kids out there running around with ipods that will hold 100,000 songs? do you honestly think that these people payed 2 to 3 hundred thousand dollars to fill it up?

    Im sorry, but really folks, have you been around the net lately? popping people for downloading music is like calling out the swat team to deal violently with a jay walker while 2 doors down a bank is being robbed. (and in a court of law the bank robbers get off easier)

    Today 2 million dollar fines, tomorrow, who knows, maybe they will start hanging people in front of the RIAA building to prove their point…..maybe at that point artists will start to take notice who represents them. hmmmm I wonder how much of that 2 million those 14 artist are going to get? maybe a few thousand? where does the rest go? oh that's right, <snaps fingers> the RIAA needs to buy lots of wood and rope and home depot just raised their prices.

  2. That is a scary thought Scott, but on the whole I think your right. the net can be very disturbing, vile, hateful, and dangerous, and I've been online since before even AOL was out, back when people were trading midi files over BBS boards. I personally don't listen to music these days anyway because its been so long since most artists have put out anything but garbage. They wonder why sales are down? oh its people steeling from them on the internet? did they stop to think that they just don't have any talent to market anymore?

    Your rope comment got me thinking as well, what would happen I wonder if one of these people that the RIAA is after stood up in full court with jury and demanded the death penalty? Can you imagine the media storm? "Man to serve 20 years for bank robbery, Single parent to be hanged for downloading "Yesterday" by the beatles. People really need to get some perspective! (that includes you artists out there)

  3. lol don't kid yourself, they would hang you if they had that option. Ive seen these guys work up close and personal. Awhile ago I was working at a pizza joint in Ohio when who should waltz thru the door? oh my, men in black? whats going on here? they said they were from RIAA and they were here to conduct a review of our permits to play music in our business. We explained that our music was provided to us by its artist (who happened to be our oven guy) They still demanded to see what CD's we had, told us that we couldn't play anything, including the radio to our customers without a permit.

    Now I've never met a leg breaker or a protection thug but I would imagine they are something like these clowns. oh and for the record, they hate to lose, they came back 3 times just to make sure we weren't playing copyrighted material. in the end we had the police come and tell them not to come back again. because at the end of the day, they don't have any legal power at all.

  4. that woman tried that too, they called it destroying evidence, just pray that they don't already have an image clone of your HD.

  5. Wow…has anyone not read this full story? That woman is stubbornly trying to say that she didn't break the law. Throughout both trials the RIAA has offered to let her settle for $3,000.

    I download tons of music illegally, but if I get caught I'm not going to pretend I didn't commit a crime. Yes the RIAA bullies people but nearly every successful musician knows that it's there to serve a purpose. This woman should grow up and settle out of court before they really do make an example of her.

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