This is why:

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I personally find it interesting that all these sharing and copyright rules apply to music and film, but you take a visual artist and the jpegs are all over the place for people to download and no one gives a crap.

The artist in this case puts in the same amount of money and work...if not more - instruments, hard drives, master tapes - all that equipment can be reused easily. Art supplies, not quite so. Of course, there is natural media software such as Painter and ArtRage, Wacom tables that last for a long time and so on but then there is no "original" to sell. But I digress.

Anyway, the artist makes a painting, can sell the original and prints, or anyone can nab a jpg and have it for free and post it wherever and no one will do a damn thing. It is also copyright infringement, but there's this amusing double-standard whereas the visual artist's legal case is a joke but the musicians is serious business.

I wonder how many of the people who are anti-music piracy have never downloaded a piece of visual art. I have no idea, but if I were to guess, I would guess very, very few - if not none.

Maybe there should be a VAA (Visual Artists Association) to sue people for 80 grand apiece for all the jpgs of artwork and professional photos they downloaded off the internet.

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Moving state? Pah. No need for that. File for bankruptcy. I don't know what bankruptcy is like down there, but up here they only take/sell actual luxuries - jewelry, one of your cars (if you have more than one) and so forth.

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Indeed. Jonathan Coulton started out giving his tunes out for free.

Indeed, if you want to go way way back, Metallica gained recognition not through album releases and touring, but bootleg tapes.

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But that is exactly what organizations like the RIAA have been afraid of in the first place. It's never been about people getting free music. People have always gotten music for free. And even in the heyday of bootlegging, the RIAA was never as draconian to professional pirates as they are to some teenager using the family computer. The RIAA's campaign against ordinary citizens, has been nothing more than a failed attempt at 'shock and awe' tactics, to scare consumers away from any internet downloading of music. There is certain 'shock and awe' value to hearing about someone who went to jail or got fined $80,000 per downloaded song.

The whole idea all along, was to scare people from downloading any song at all: legal or illegal, it did not matter. They knew from the beginning with Napster, that once the audience started going down that path, it would only be a matter of time before it gave rise to a new generation of musicians who realized they had little to no need for working with the big media studios.

One of the long standing, dirty little secrets to how the music industry operates, is that typically, new musical acts do not make a dime from their album/CD sales. When you hear about so and so going platinum, the RIAA makes a big deal about stuff like that, as it is more a celebration of a company getting paid, than about the musician who made the music getting paid. They tell you that musical acts tour to promote their album, but that is a complete, bullshit lie. Musical acts tour, because touring is the only way most of them get paid. Most new music acts after recording their album, actually owe the record company money - sometimes extortionate amounts. Taking out of the mouths and even outright stealing from musical acts has been so ingrained in the music business for so long, that execs act like they are entitled to the profits they gain by ripping off kids what mostly amounts to just kids.

The entire business model of the RIAA associated studios is based on the idea that the overwhelming amount of revenue generated by music sales, belongs to the record company. So lets say you are an up and coming musical type with some real talent and at least half a head on your shoulders. And let's say you find out in advance that signing with a record label pretty much guarantees you will make no money from album sales (as you probably read any one of over a couple dozen books written on the subject matter). And lets say that you are not greedy, and would honestly be happy with moderate fame and a larger paycheck than the average Joe, so long as you get to make a comfortable living playing music. So you are thinking to yourself, if you are not going to make money on your CD sales, why not just give the music away for free? Use the free music as a means to attract fans and generate buzz for your live performances, and then go on tour, and make your money touring. At the end of the day, it is the exact same setup the RIAA has set in place, however you realize that if you are smart (and surround yourself with pretty knowledgeable management), you can do all that without ever signing with any related studio. And why would a smart musical type not want to sign with the RIAA? Because the RIAA normally locks new acts into pretty ironclad lifetime contracts (or seven to ten albums, which for most musicians, is more than they will ever produce in a lifetime). And once you are locked into your ironclad contract, you find out that you do not even own the rights to the music you produce while under said contract (Prince found this out the hard war). Or you do not even own the rights to the name of your own band that you started yourself, years before you ever signed a record deal (Motley Crue found this out the hard way). Or the record label decides they want to change the way you look, the way you dress, the way you talk and even the style of music you play, all for the sake of manufacturing an image designed to sell to 'tweens and teens (Destiny's Child found this out the hard way). Or the fact that you find out that the RIAA associated companies, after they have made all the changes to your band/musical act, have a less than 7% success rate at making any of those acts famous (far too many bands that no one has even heard of, have found this out the hard way). Yet despite not having a proven system to make you a star, you are still locked under an ironclad contract, which guarantees you fewer rights to the art you produce, or as an employee in general, than most 3rd world countries on Amnesty International's list of nations responsible for human rights violations have for their citizens.

The point is, for a musical type savvy to the ways of the RIAA, there are plenty of reasons to make you decide that signing a contract with one of their companies, is a pretty bad idea. If only you could just give the music away for free to promote yourself, and then just tour and pocket that money as your own, without going through all the drama of being treated like Kunta Kente (boy, I said yo name is Toby) by the RIAA.

Oh but there is a way around the system. It's this new fangled thing called the internet. From the very beginning with Napster, when the RIAA realized just how many people were using the service, they realized immediately the future ramifications of what it all meant. It meant for the first time, that musical types with half a brain could do it all, without them. So the plan went into motion to scare the consumer from downloading music at all from over the internet - it did not matter if it was a legal or illegal download. If the consumer was terrified to download music, even legal downloads, that would close the door for independent minded musicians to bypass the RIAA and their brutal and unfair contract system.

Of course as we all know, it has all backfired into the face of the RIAA. Not only have they not managed to keep up with the ever changing face of the technology file-sharers use, but their acts of legalized terrorism against music fans has resulted in more people downloading music, more often than ever before; and not less, which was their desired goal. Their actions over the last decade have fostered an air of no sympathy for the RIAA from any quarter, except for the sympathy they pay for by "lobbying" our politicians and judges with boatloads of money. Meanwhile, slowly but surely, more and more musicians are waking up to the idea that they don't need the RIAA, and are simply giving their music away for free; or selling it at near free pricing, and using the internet and a consumer base rabid to download more, as their means to get distribute their music to building their fan base - a fan base who has no problem showing up to concerts or purchasing merchandising like t-shirts. Most of these guys are small time and tour the circuit of Pollstar affiliated clubs and music halls, but you still have a few big heavy hitters in the bunch.

Terribly sorry for the overly long wall-o-text, but I just wanted to point out that you (and others on this thread) are so right about musicians like Saul Williams, NIN and Jonathan Coulton being the future of the music business, and give some insight into why you are correct. Heck, even Prince gives most of his music away for free these days. And since he started doing that, has managed to turn his business into one of the most successful touring acts on the planet. His Musicology tour in 2004 netted him over $87.4 million, and his Earth Tour in 2007, he sold out O2 Arena (which holds 20,000 people) for 21 straight, netting him almost $20 million from the one venue. Not a bad return on investment for someone who just gives all his music away free of charge.

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That ruling seems pretty harsh, but it's still taking someone else's property without proper compensation. I would hope no sane person would argue that she's guilty of stealing music. It's the same as if I showed up to your job on pay day and took your check. There'd be nothing fair or right about it.

It's crazy how so many people have developed this layer of skin that is impervious to morals.

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I can't imagine any single decent human being in their right mind supporting such a fuck-tarded amount for someone in her position to pay for something so unbelievably insignificant. As Shamoononon said, many acts of negligence that involve death don't even incur this kind of legal wrath, and 24 goddamn songs ends up with a $1.92 million dollar fine? Well fuck me if I'm a little confused. Are these songs at all significant to them? I'd chance to say that they're most certainly not. Very likely this is mainly a mad grab to scare everyone else into staying within their archaic business model, which is never good for anyone.

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