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For a third party to take your party(sic), and distribute it for profit is theft.

There is no profit involved in file-SHARING.

Besides which, file-sharing is a violation of a malum prohibitum law, meaning it is wrong only because there is law against it, in contrast to a malum in se law, meaning the act (such as murder) is wrong in and of itself.

The current music distribution system developed when the technology for mass reproduction of music was limited to pressing grooves into vinyl disks. The music industry was providing a valuable service to the artists and the listeners because of the large capital investment required to create recordings.

Times have changed. Modern computer technology allows anybody with a PC to record and distribute music, be it music they recorded themselves or music they copied from a commercial source.

People like you want to enforce obsolete business models on modern technology. You want technology to adapt to the law, rather than force businesses to adapt to technology.

If people like you have their way, in ten years it will be illegal to own a general-purpose computer. You will only be able to purchase digital-rights management appliances that, first and foremost, protect obsolete industries, like the recording industry, from modern technology.

Gutting technology available to ordinary people seems like a mighty high price to pay to protect sleazebags like music promoters, but I guess your prefer protecting the obsolete business model of sleazebags to allowing ordinary people to have full access to the most advanced technology possible.

When you think of the word cartel, the visions of Tony Montana, reaching into his closet to introduce you to his little friend comes to mind.

A cartel, my friends, is a group of independant companies coming together, to control production of product in order to fix prices. This joining of forces often times sqeezes potential competitors before they can truely give the marketplace a choice.

The latest cartel is one that effects each and every one of you.

The cartel I speak of is the RIAA or the Recording Industry Association of America.

The membership to this exclusive club is quite impressive. A complete who's who of the industry.

The RIAA's main function was to make sure that artist's copyrights were not stomped on by illegal forces trying to make a prophet from artists without paying up.

Sounds nice.

But in the past decade or so, the cartel has been moving into a darkened place where the rights of the music fan(consumer) have been stomped on.

The first salvo was fired at MP3.com. With MP3.com's Instant Listening Service and Beam-it programs, Net users can get digital copies of CDs they already own or of music they've purchased from the company's CD retail partners. In other words, MP3.com gave the users digital online access to songs the user already paid for. This way, the user can download and listen to music while waiting for the CD that was purchased to arrive via mail. MP3.com says it uses security technology to verify that the computer user owns a physical copy of the CD.

In other words, the RIAA, wants you to pay for the CD and then pay for every download of that CD you already own! Double dipping. Perhaps we even should pay royalties for every time we mention an artists name to a friend.

This should surpise no one. The RIAA tried to get the supreme court in the early 1990's to declare the sale of used CDs as illegal and to ban the resale of them. They of course lost.

The recording industry wants to make it harder for consumers to directly copy CDs .Efforts are already in place to install digital "watermarks" on CD tracks that would enable copyright holders to trace illegal copies and to create devices that would refuse to play clones. In its first phase, SDMI selected a watermark system created by Verance Technologies as the global standard. Big brother is watching.....be afraid!

Now the cartel has focused its big cannons on Napster.

This one is bit more complicated than the MP3.com situation. This time, the music is for free and unlimited. But what are the limits on music sharing? If I make a copy for a couple of my friends, is that illigal? How about a million friends? Where is the line? And since Napster isn't making any money right now, then how can they be accused of piracy without showing profit?

I can understand the arguement that the artists might be screwed out of royalties if the Napster user downloads, yet never purchases. But to have the RIAA, whos members have been screwing the artists since Little Richard, use the bands as a pollitical pawn in this big corperate chess game is the hight of hypocrisy.

The fact that the very few in the music biz make money off of royalties and most make the little scratch they can from concerts and shirt sales.

The RIAA should at least be intellectually honest with us and tell us that they are in this suit for the control. The control of product is the heart and sole of the cartel. And once the heart and soul is beating in sync(no not the crappy band) , then the prices can be fixed.

And now for a little lube before the next segment......

The RIAA, who are great at giving sermons of fairness from the financial pulpit, have been busted for illegal price fixing with some major music chains.

New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who led the charge against the evil empire, said that the price fixing represented a few dollars per CD and the total damage to consumers is estimated to be over $470 million dollars.

Well, where the hell is my check?!

It seems that record companies have been paying for the advertising of stores that agreed to sell the CDs at a price fixed by the record company. They even have a name for it, it's called Minimum Advertised Pricing (MAP).

I have another word for it........THE RAPING OF THE MUSIC FAN!

The companies named in the suit are:

Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Brothers Music Group
Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment
Seagram Co.'s Universal Music Group
BMG, the music unit of Bertelsmann AG
EMI Group Plc.

Somehow, while Janet Reno and the justice dept. were busy trying to break up Microsoft, the RIAA have coasted by with a free ride. Maybe it's because the likes of Barbra Streisand and Don Henley have free range amongst politicians. Who knows.

What I do know however, that I find it impossible to see the RIAA's side in the Napster suit. After all the recording industry has done to the music fan as well as the artists, how can you support them? Napster is fan and artist friendly. The cartel is not.

To steal a line from the great M.L.K.,....
I have a dream. A dream where artists can bypass the recording industry altogether and sell their music directly online to the fan through programs such as Napster. Each download would be about 20 cents, thus costing the fan about two dollars or so per CD with no cost for physical product to the artists. Then the artists can go out on the road and make even more scratch with concerts and merchandising.

I have seen the promiseland......and so has the recording industry. That's why they will stop at nothing to destroy freedom and continue their economic bondage on you, me and Little Richard.