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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.

"I have a dream"

The modern enterainer's "dream" seems to stay at home and be a studio band with occassional "star" appearances on eMpTy-V or cameos in movies.

Performance and touring (live performance) seems to take a back seat position to being famous.

Record sales get the name out there but much of the money goes to the label (to pay off padded out studio charges, promotion fees, distribution, etc.). The "publisher" gets money from the song airplays on the radio.

The act gets money from live performance and tshirt sales. No one can take away your live performance money (the only way to get that live show is to be there, even a videotape of the show is not the same).

Too many artists would like to be able to sit at home (disecting hooks from previous generations hit songs and looping them) and live a life of luxury and relaxation.

Being a musician is a job, that's why I say that these characters "dream" of being stars. Famous for being famous.