October 15, 2003.

By 'CookyMonzta'

To the advocates of the P2P and inependent music community:

        I'm sure you've heard about the story of how TLC went broke in 1996, despite having sold 11 million copies of 'CrazySexyCool'.  When I heard about it, I asked myself how that could possibly happen.  But as time went on, I learned more (largely from television) about how the music industry worked, and how, in many cases, many artists retire or are pushed aside with nothing to show for their efforts.

        Even before the TLC bankruptcy story, I already knew that most artists got only $1 for every single or album they sold.  I didn't think it could possibly be a lot less for some artists.  But then I saw VH1's 'Inside Out' last month, when Toni Braxton was at odds with her record company for 2 reasons:

1.     She was pregnant with her second child, and she was in no condition to promote her latest album the way LaFace Records and Arista wanted her to.  As a result, her 4th album barely went gold.

        The record company blames the poor sales on her inability to promote the album.  But then again, it may be a case that consumers have moved on to other artists.  For one, her first single, "Hit The Freeway", didn't even make the top 40 on either the Hot 100 or R&B charts.  For another, you may be aware that Whitney, Mariah and even Madonna are finding it hard to go platinum, because to most consumers they've been at the forefront for too long, and as a result have now been replaced by the likes of Ashanti and Beyoncé.

2.     Despite selling 8 million copies of her first album, 6 million of her second and close to 3 million of her third, Toni had nothing to show for those sales, because what she got amounted to a measly 34 CENTS per copy, which is just about how much it cost for the factories to duplicate and print each CD.

        It makes me wonder how much of a percentage the writers and producers gave themselves for each sale, and how much the leeches took from the rest.  They do realize that, without Toni's voice, they probably wouldn't have had hit singles or hit albums, or sold as many.

        Toni knows this as well.  Which is why she just severed her ties with Arista.  One wonders if she'll take the advice of most independent artists, and go to a record company with little or no affiliation with the RIAA (even at the risk of being blackballed from mainstream radio).  Or perhaps, do what some artists are doing...

        ...Which is, to make their own CDs and sell them over the Web.  Two months ago, ABC News correspondent Bill Redeker covered a story on the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, and how they are creating their own CDs and selling them for $8 to $10 a copy at their Web site (www.dead.net; please be advised that I have neither seen nor confirmed the existence of their site).

        The method is simple:  Bring a makeshift miniature studio to every concert venue, and record the entire concert on a hard drive or on master CDs or DVDs.  Then take that recording to a shop, and mass-produce hundreds or thousands of CDs.  Then advertise and sell those CDs on the Web.

        According to some of the CD duplicating factory advertisements I've seen in the Village Voice, it costs maybe $1 or $1.25 to duplicate and print a single CD, and provide a jewel case, information insert or brochure, and shrink wrap.

        Considering that there are no fat cats or RIAA leeches to pay off (which scares them shitless), the Dead need only to put away $1 to $3 per CD sold to make another 1 to 3 CDs, and they'll have anywhere from $5 to $9 to split amongst those who actually participated in the creation of the music and the CD itself.  In simpler language, instead of making less than $1 per CD sold, the Dead are getting back a net earning of, at the very least, fifty percent of the price of the CD!

        The music industry and the RIAA are shitting bricks over the prospect of the erupting volcano of technology the independent artists have at their disposal.  Which is why the RIAA is trying to make themselves the only source of legitimate music.  They failed (according to Boycott-RIAA.com post 7288, 'We've won the battle; now help us win the war', by Lea Reznik on July 30) at trying to get the Copyright Arbitration and Royalty Panel to make them the only authorized royalty collector.

        Given the information you provided in 2 of your commentaries ('RIAA Is Running Out Of Time' on May 5, and 'Declaration of Independents' on May 22), the RIAA, in their efforts to stifle the growing independent market, may resort to whining to lawmakers for legislation to require all artists (independent or otherwise) to register with them, before they even cut a CD.  That way, they'd have control of the royalty distribution as well.

        That, of course, smacks of something you'd expect from North Korea or any other nation that outlaws all parties except the one in control.  Quite hypocritical, I would say, to maintain capitalist control of the entire industry, while at the same time imposing communist control on the masses, when less than 10% of all the music in this country is RIAA-affiliated.  But knowing them, they'll try anything to seize control of how the other 90% is distributed, or destroy the other 90%.

        And why is that?  Because with the technology out there today, the independent artist has the possibility of making more money per CD sold.  No longer will the average artist be confined to cutting a track or album and selling it out of the trunk of his or her car on cassettes (which is what some rock and hip-hop stars did at least a decade ago; among those, Hammer and Too $hort).  If they can afford the appropriate equipment, they can record a track themselves, play with the controls to make the track sound almost as clear as if it were produced in a top-of-the-line studio, and mass-duplicate the track or album on CDs and sell on the Web.

        But if the RIAA succeed in gaining control over the entire industry, they could dictate how the independent artist and his or her music is promoted, even if that artist is not affiliated with the RIAA.  I doubt that is likely to happen, but with the RIAA having gone completely schizophrenic, we dare not overlook any possible treachery they may resort to.

        Speaking of treachery, is it true that they sued a man for $30,000 for humming a Metallica song while he was walking down the street?

        Not every new artist choosing to go independent can afford to pay $20 to $1,000 per hour to rent a studio (for the artist in the fat cat's world, a percentage of that money is undoubtedly going to some RIAA hack).  Fortunately, the independent artist can make his or her own studio at home, and maybe for less than $1,000.  He or she may need only a powerful desktop computer and studio software from companies such as Magix (www.magix.com), Cakewalk (www.cakewalk.com) and Voyetra (www.voyetra.com).  These companies even have software to create music itself.

        And what can such an artist do, once they've recorded their music?  If the artist has the means and the money to advertise and sell on the Web, he or she can take their master recording to a CD duplicating factory, and as I described with the Grateful Dead story, mass-produce hundreds or thousands of CDs.  $10,000 will cover the cost to make 8,000 to 10,000 CDs, with insert, jewel case and shrink wrap.

        There is another way for artists to mass-produce their own CDs, and they can do it right from their own home, provided that they can afford the equipment.

        Anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000 (depending on how many CDs one wants to duplicate at any one time, and how fast) will buy a CD/DVD duplication and printing system from Disc Makers (www.discmakers.com) or Primera Technologies (www.primera.com).  I assume that 8-ounce bottles of cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink should be enough ink for thousands of CDs.  In the right place, each bottle shouldn't cost more than $20 each.  As for wax or gloss for the printed side of the CD, I have no idea.

        Each CD-R these days costs anywhere from 20 to 30¢, if one buys them in large numbers.  CD jewel cases don't cost much more than 25 to 35¢ each.  It costs pennies for the paper used to print up the information to slip inside the CD case.

        That amounts to less than $1 per CD.  If the artist made 10,000 CDs, and sold them for $10 each, that artist would make $100,000, and would have the option of taking $10,000 or more from that money to make more CDs to sell.  $50,000 would be enough to make 40,000 to 50,000 CDs, and would yield gross earnings of upwards to $500,000!  And promotion is as simple as having a Web site with maybe a 1-minute MP3 snippet of each track on the CD.  They don't need to break the bank to promote their CD, and end up having to pay back the fat cats for the cost of promoting the CD.

        If this artist were to sign with a major record label, he or she would have had to go gold (at least 500,000 sales) to make $500,000 (or less); yet 50,000 CDs was enough for the do-it-yourself independent artist.

        And here is the thing that really scares the RIAA and the industry fat cats:  once again, the dreaded MP3!  For 5 years, the RIAA has tried desperately to eliminate from the public domain the concept of music compressed to MPEG-1 layer 3 specifications.  They even endorsed the SDMI project to help push MP3 and CD ripping out of the forefront.

        SDMI claims to be on hiatus, but in truth it was a miserable failure, as Dr. Edward Felten and his team cracked their encryption code, which prompted threats by the RIAA and industry fat cats with a lawsuit if he revealed his code-cracking procedure to the public.  [By the way, did Felten ever manage to publish his method?  And is the SDMI encryption method related to the encryption method that was defeated with a magic marker?]

        All the RIAA efforts to push MP3 aside, and I suppose file-sharing in general, have failed.  I've read that they've even tried to step on the toes of artists outside the RIAA realm who want to promote their music by way of MP3 downloading.

        I'm surprised the RIAA and the industry fat cats have not sued DMusic.com, IUMA.com, Ampcast.com and other largely-independent MP3 sites, to eliminate them, or force them to be swallowed up by one of the big 5, like MP3.com was (prompting departures by many artists); although I have a feeling that MP3.com may once again become completely independent, if Vivendi/Universal is bought out by NBC.

        That brings me back to the power that the independent artists have, with the use of MP3 technology.  How many MP3 CD albums do you know of, that are being sold in major record retailers like Tower, HMV and Virgin?  As far as I know, absolutely none!  Either because they haven't grabbed anyone's attention yet, or the RIAA is working feverishly with the retailers to block the distribution or sale of such CDs on their record racks.

        What are they afraid of?  They're afraid that, if MP3 CDs should replace conventional CDs on record shelves, and sell in large numbers, the concept of the ridiculous 8-album contract (which was TLC's original contract) will become a thing of the past.

        No longer will a consumer have to pay $20 for an album with 12 to 15 tracks, where one or two are decent, while the rest is shit.  No longer will an artist record upwards of 25 to 40 singles in a single series of sessions for one album release, and be forced to choose a dozen for a single album, or worse, be pushed aside as the fat cats choose which records make the album, while the rest of the recordings are never ever heard by the consumer.

        No longer will an artist be subject to overinflated, if not imaginary or outright illegal, fees for services by the record company.  [Did I read somewhere that Don Henley's record company engaged in payola without his knowledge, and docked a percentage of his checks for the cost of this activity?]

        Once more, no longer will the artist end up with a 2nd or 3rd album that tanks, and suffer as he or she is dropped from the label; because in some cases, if the artist decides to go independent, his or her former record company will try to block that effort (threatening lawsuits, most of the time), because the artist is still under the contract for the label that he or she was dropped from.

        It sort of reminds me of the Little Rascals episode, where Alfalfa had this dream, where he is singing in a concert hall (yes, that 'Barber of Seville' episode), and he bombs, and the guy holding his contract kicks him out and puts him on the street to sing.  He can't go anywhere else, because he is still under the guy's contract.

        Come to think of it, Prince had the same problem, when he tried to take his master recordings from Warner Brothers, and found out just how little control he had of his own creations, the shit he wrote and produced.  Which is the real reason he wrote 'slave' backwards on his face, and abandoned his name for 7 years in the place of the symbol he used as the title of his 1992 album.

        Worse yet, the fat cats remind me of mafia dons who force prospective entrepreneurs to fork over a large percentage in "protection money".  It's that so-called protection money (and probably the ever-present unscrupulous accountant) that drove Toni Braxton and TLC to bankruptcy.

        The Web is cluttered with MP3s with a bandwidth rate (or whatever you call it) of 128 kilobits per second; but there are many that are available at 160k, 192k, 256k and even 320k.  256 and 320 are as close to CD quality as one can come without compromising too much of their CD-R space.  At the average of 5 minutes per song, one can put 75 songs at 320kbps each on a single CD.

        Those 75 tracks amount to anywhere from 2 to 3 years worth of studio recordings; although there are some artists whose creativity level is so high that they can make that many songs in a single year.  The industry fat cats would be shivering in their shoes if someone managed to put out that many tracks on a single CD, and sell it for $9.99, and were able to earn the equivalent of five standard fat-cat-controlled CDs (spread out over 5 to 15 years, no doubt) of 15 tracks each.

        40 to 150 songs on a single CD for $10??  Why not?  Better to have a CD that is likely to have at least 20 outstanding songs out of a collection of 100, than to have 2 out of 15, and wait two to five years for the artist to put out another CD, even while the recordings that didn't make the cut for the first CD are sitting in a fat cat's master tape vault, and are likely to never make it to the next CD.

        There is an MP3.com artist named Bassic (aka Martin Lindhe, who was there before Vivendi/Universal took over), who is selling his entire 12-year catalog of over 130 tracks on a single CD for $14.99.  I have also come across Web pages with artists capable of creating as many as 30 songs in a single year.

        $14.99 for 130 tracks (even a 'greatest hits' collection, which is essentially what Bassic's collection is) is a better deal than $18.99 for 15 tracks.  If you wanted a collection of 100 hits from one of the big 5 labels (regardless of the artist's popularity), you'd probably have to pay $150.

        The best thing about putting an entire series of studio recordings on one CD in MP3 format (preferably at least 256kbps) is that the artist will not have to scratch his or her head, wondering if one or two songs left off a fat-cat-controlled CD had the potential to be smash hits.  And the audio quality, though not perfect, is very satisfactory.

        The surviving members of the Grateful Dead have probably opened another door that the recording industry will find themselves unable to close.  Bob Weir should go to campuses or music expos nationwide, and lecture aspiring musicians on the art of recording, burning and selling CDs without relying on the leeches of the industry; because if thousands more artists knew how simple it was to produce their own material, promote and sell it over the Web themselves or through an independent music site like DMusic.com, IUMA.com or Ampcast.com, they would not have to be slaves to a notoriously long contract that clearly benefits the fat cats more than the artists, and there would be no need for a rogue lobbying organization claiming to be working in their best interests, while in fact working in the best interest of the record companies.  Hundreds would withdraw their RIAA memberships in droves, driving Cary and his wild bunch into oblivion.

        Speaking of a decrease in membership, is my memory faulty, or am I correct with regard to the following:  that the RIAA tried to push a law into the books to have all recordings classified as works for hire?  Which is to say that a record company would have the right to use a recording however they saw fit, even without the permission of the artist, songwriter or producer, along with all the rights regarding how the record company would compensate the artist for his or her recording.

        In simpler language, you record it, they own it; all of it!  The concept applies to the auto assembly line, and a team of programmers creating a software item; which is to say that the Ford Thunderbird and Windows XP are works for hire; they don't belong to any one individual.

        Imposing such a concept on the artist would mean that the fat cats would have even more control of an artist's recordings (if not the artist as well), and more money in their pockets.  Can you imagine an artist leaving his record company to go to another or to go independent, and being forbidden to perform songs he wrote and/or produced in concert?

        Come to think of it, that sort of thing has come very close to happening from time to time.  If this work-for-hire measure had become law, things would have been far worse for Toni Braxton, who severed her ties with Arista.  She would almost certainly be forbidden to perform songs from her 4 albums at any venue.  For her, it would be as if she had never recorded with Arista to begin with.

        Go in with nothing, come out with nothing.  Which is why many artists choose to stay independent.  I thought I heard that Cody ChesnuTT turned down a $2 million contract from a major label.  Or was it someone else?

        Now, why is it that file-sharing is like a stampede, which is completely out of the RIAA's control?  Because the downloaders don't believe that any CD, no matter how good it may be, is worth $20.  I happen to believe that most DVDs are not worth $20.

        And why else are they downloading?  Because the singles market is almost nonexistent, and I dare say, by deliberate design.

        What do I mean by that?  Except for Kid Rock and Alison Moorer's "Picture", the only singles that have gone gold or platinum since 2002 have come from the alumni of what I think is a potential one-hit or one-album-wonder factory.

        The one-trick-pony factory I'm talking about is American Idol.  In each year of the 1990s, there were at least 2 singles that went double-platinum.  That is, until 1999, when Cher's 1998 single "Believe" crossed the 2-million-sales mark.  Hers was the only one in 1999, and the last.  If you exclude 2003 American Idol runner-up Clay Aiken's recent platinum hit "This Is The Night" (which, by the way, received almost no airplay whatsoever), Madonna's 2000 hit "Music" would have been the last platinum single in the history of the U.S. music business.  If you exclude a host of American Idol gold singles, Mariah Carey's 2001 hit "Loverboy" would have been the last gold single ever sold.

        In fact, if it hadn't been for 2002 American Idol champion Kelly Clarkson's "A Moment Like This", last year would have come and gone without a gold single at all.

        And why is that?  Because the industry fat cats have all but ceased production of the single on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, deliberately.  Their purpose is to make consumers buy the albums.  The shrinking of the singles market started almost at the same time Napster was becoming popular enough to get sued.

        As a result, the singles racks have shrunk in size and have been dominated by imports.  Many consumers are hesitant to shell out anywhere from $6.99 to $9.99 for an import single (most domestic singles sell for $4.99 to $6.99), but some are willing because they refuse to pay $19.99 for a whole album to hear only one or two hits.

        I wish I knew how the singles market was faring in countries with a heavy dance-oriented fan base, like the U.K. and Germany, because dance music is the reason that the singles racks still exist in many U.S. stores today, and it is probably the reason why the music industry overseas still prints mainstream (i.e., pop, R&B, hip-hop, etc.) and dance singles in large numbers to fill their record shops, as well as ours.

        But even that is not enough to satisfy the demand for better music out there.  I think I read somewhere that less than 10% of all the music (even the music that would be classified under so-called mainstream categories, like pop, R&B, rock, country, hip-hop and dance) that is produced in a single year makes it to mainstream radio, while the rest is almost never heard by the average consumer.

        Why is that?  Because the playlists of these radio stations are extremely narrow, and I would bet even narrower than 15 or 20 years ago.  If I could name all the singles released this year, that New York City's WKTU 103.5 FM played on a regular basis on any given day, the number would most likely amount to less than 40, and that may include the same 10 to 15 classic dance hits they throw into the current rotation.

        Which is why file-sharing and downloading continue.  It could be the reason why satellite radio was developed.  The simple fact is this:  If the music industry (major record labels and mainstream radio) won't give the people what they want, they'll find it somewhere else, with any means at their disposal; and if the music industry won't let the artists give the people what they want, they'll find another way and another means to promote their material.

        Which is why the RIAA is trying to freeze out the independent artists who have no affiliation with the major labels, and stifle consumer demand by suing them.  Having failed in several lawsuits against file-sharing Web sites, and finding it impossible to force Verizon and Grokster to cough up names, they've resorted to hiring Internet spies to do their dirty work, and suing individual file-sharers who were unfortunately caught with their machines unprotected by spy-blocking software.

        It's obvious that I'm not alone in the conclusion that the spies working for the RIAA probably secured profiles on the 261 people in their first wave of lawsuits.  Notice how quickly some of them settled, because apparently many of them are too poor or too oblivious to the existence of information which would have helped them to decide better on how to fight the RIAA, either with their own machines or in court, and it's obvious that Cary and his gallery of rogues knew this beforehand.

        The RIAA are playing a dangerous game of Russian roulette.  The bad news is, there are two bullets in the chamber for them, and soon enough, they will shoot themselves in the foot, and then in the head.  The funny thing about it is, they're making it very easy for themselves to put themselves out of business, and easy for us to help them on their way to hell.

        For one, there are some who are probably bold and willing enough to refuse to answer a subpoena, just long enough to see how agitated they can make the RIAA and their fat-cat friends, before they proceed to countersue the RIAA for harassment at the very least.

        For another, if even one of those 261 people challenges an RIAA lawsuit, and has enough money to force all the RIAA dirt to be brought to the forefront and into the courtroom along with the lawsuit, the RIAA's goose is cooked.

        Why is that?  Because it's clear that the RIAA have lied to the people and to Congress.  Is it any wonder why Cary and his cronies have not sued you, AzOz.com, Boycott-RIAA.com, GnutellaNews.com, DMusic.com, EFF.org, P2PNet.net, FairForShare.com, Jim Lynch (who wrote a piece called 'RIAA, drop dead!' in August, 2002), CDFreaks.com (which said that it would take more than 2,000 years for the RIAA to sue every file-sharer at the rate of 75 a day), and even Methlabs.com (providers of PeerGuardian) and ZeroPaid.com (providers of K++, which reportedly blocks most RIAA-affiliated IP addresses), for defamation of character, slander, libel or all three?

        They know that you guys have the truth on your side.  They also know that, if they step on your pinky toe even once, they'll be in deeper shit than they think they can put their victims in.  The victim with good connections may need only to call upon someone representing the anti-RIAA crusade to testify and/or present evidence to the deception and lies of the RIAA, and Cary's hired honchos will squirm before the judge and jury, before the judge throws out their case.  And then their would-be victim can countersue the RIAA for $1,000,000 for each song the RIAA claimed that he or she "stole".

        Which, by the way, is what two of their victims (at the very least, I'd bet) ought to do right now!  66-year-old Sarah Seabury-Ward (accused of sharing over 2,000 songs, most of which were hip-hop) and Ross Plank (accused of sharing mostly Latin songs, although reportedly he doesn't know Spanish), who were sued along with 259 others, despite having neither any significant knowledge of KaZaA nor any files to show for it, quite probably exposed a significant, if not greater, degree of incompetence and stupidity on the part of the RIAA and their spies from the likes of MediaDefender, OverPeer, MediaForce, BayTSP, Copyright.net, Ranger Online...

        ...Just how much is it costing the RIAA to hire all these companies to spy on the P2P networks, among other things?  Supplying the RIAA with spies (hundreds, if not thousands, I imagine) and spy programmers don't come cheap.  On top of that, it's probably costing them even more money to go after Verizon, Grokster, Aimster/Madster, Streamcast and individual file-sharers, and defend themselves against KaZaA, who are slowly becoming the Sandinistas of the P2P world*.  Do they really think that settlements of $2,000 to $20,000 from 100 of their victims will cover their costs?  Do they really think they can take 1,000 people to court?  How about 10,000?

        Do they have any idea how much money it will cost them to pursue these cases, or how much it will cost to hire lawyers to travel to each of the victims' cities to pursue each case individually?

        Have they even calculated the number of years or even decades it will take to pursue the cases of those who would rather fight them in court?  Or are they so arrogant to think that everyone they sue will shiver in their boots at the thought of a billion-dollar judgment against them, and settle out of court in a New York minute?

        Speaking of which, no judge in their right mind would endorse a billion-dollar judgment against a college kid, would they?  The RIAA and the judge both know (well, the judge maybe) that in all likelihood the RIAA would never see a penny of it, or better yet, an appeals court would either overturn the decision or mark it down very significantly.

        I suppose that most people will agree that the only way to fight a rogue organization that plays dirty is to play even dirtier.  They throw mud in your face, you throw acid in theirs.  They bring a 12-gauge, you bring 12 megatons!  They've got spies working for them, why not plant spies in their merry bunch to work for us???

        One need not have to guess that the RIAA has moles infiltrating the file-sharing networks, becoming good buddies with other file-sharers (the real file-sharers), trading files left and right, until the spies have enough information and evidence to take to the RIAA and stab the file-sharers in their backs.  But a single convincing counterspy, working for the file-sharing and downloading (P2P) community, planted in one of the RIAA's hired spy networks like BayTSP or OverPeer, could bring them to their knees.

        Instead of kissing the RIAA's ass (although he will act the part), and tracing the IP addresses of would-be file-sharers, this MP3 counterspy would gather the IP addresses of every known (and some unknown) machine connected to the entire RIAA spy conglomerate, if not the names and E-mail and snail-mail addresses of the spies working for the RIAA, and mail that information to an organization, like Boycott-RIAA.com or P2PUnited.net, to expose to the entire P2P community worldwide, along with, perhaps, whatever procedures the RIAA spy networks use to determine or select new IP addresses or hide themselves from hackers.

        If the counterspy is capable, maybe he'll find out what the RIAA's next plan will be, before slipping out of the RIAA spy conglomerate without ever being noticed.  Then he, along with the rest of the P2P community, can watch as the RIAA's house of cards comes crashing down like a pyramid of champagne glasses, as each and every last new cover that their spy networks attempt to initiate is blown sky-high.  Imagine one or two hackers working for OverPeer, having secured a new IP address to resume their dirty work for the RIAA, only to be kicked off by hackers for the P2P community, who have been waiting three days for OverPeer or any other RIAA spy network to attempt acquisition of that address.

        Does the P2P community actually have infiltrators roaming around the RIAA spy networks to trip up Cary's cronies?  And would one of the RIAA's spy networks know that they have a counterspy in their midst, passing information to the P2P community and their support groups?

        Come to think of it, can the RIAA trust any of their spies and hackers not to get so pissed with its carpet-bombing campaign, that they turn against the RIAA and sing like canaries (if you know what I mean) to the P2P community, exposing as many of the RIAA's dirty secrets that they are aware of?  I wouldn't be surprised if the suit against 12-year-old Brianna Lahara angered some of the RIAA spies enough to become turncoats working for the P2P community, especially if it turns out they were getting paid peanuts by the RIAA.

        Lie in bed with dogs, you get fleas.  The mud that you step in (and sling) may very well be quicksand.  That is what I would say to Cary and his cronies, if I were one of his spies who suddenly turned against him.  I wouldn't be surprised if, somewhere down the road, a busload of the RIAA's own mercenaries bring them down, and make it easier for the P2P and independent communities to finish them off.

        Considering that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of file-sharers who are unaware of the existence of the many P2P and anti-RIAA sites that present news that exposes the propaganda of the RIAA/MPAA, you should put some of your commentaries on the message boards (in the category of music) of the most popular Web search engines; starting with Yahoo and Google.  Those who visit the message boards would undoubtedly read them, and log on to one of the many anti-RIAA Web links left in the messages, and become even more aware.

        This actually brings me back to the subject of spy-blocking software.  Right now, file-sharing has dropped by as much as 20% on the major networks (chief among them, KaZaA).  The RIAA thinks they're having their way with the P2P community, and are thisclose to gloating.

        Too bad they're not aware that there are more file-sharing programs and networks out there, and quite probably, far too many for the RIAA to even keep track of.  Many of the file-sharers have probably switched to a more obscure program or network.  I do recall that Gnutelliums.com has a program called Phex.

        Once more, it may be the case that those who have left the biggest of the major networks are reorganizing and exploring the reliability of spy-blocking software.  PeerGuardian, KaZaA Lite/K++ and SpyBot Search and Destroy have been publicized all over the Web (especially at the P2P and anti-RIAA sites).

        With a P2P community numbering over 60 million (if that is only nationwide, I'd bet that number is closer to 150 million worldwide), if even 10 million become aware enough to download these programs (and there may be many more available), you can bet the farm that the RIAA will resort to suing every site and anyone who encourages the downloading of "copyright infringement" software, if not P2P downloading itself.

        TechTV's Martin Sargent had a guest named Kevin Rose on his show Unscrewed on Wednesday, Oct. 1, showing how PeerGuardian and K++ block the RIAA spies from acquiring your IP address.  I'd have to say I was impressed by what I saw (even though it wasn't much), although it does make sense to update the shitload of RIAA-affiliated IPs, knowing that their spies will bounce from one machine or network to another.

        But the RIAA has a big problem, for which I must ask this question:  Do the IP addresses range from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255, or from 0.0.0.0 to 999.999.999.999?

        If the limit is 255.255.255.255, that absolutely begs the following question:  Just how many of the 4,294,967,296 IP addresses do the RIAA and their spies think they have at their disposal?  Don't they know that a great deal of those addresses is occupied worldwide??  Have they any idea what would happen to them if they attempted to hijack another company's IP address for their dirty work?

        Better yet, do they even realize that new sites pop up on the Web every day, to such a degree that those sites will quickly acquire the many vacant IP addresses out there?  Soon enough, the RIAA and their spies will run out of IP addresses to hide behind, and they will be completely limited to whatever they've reserved for themselves.

        As the P2P community become aware that the RIAA has nowhere to run or hide, they'll become even more comfortable with the spy-blocking software they have, and they and the P2P Web sites will invite other file-sharers to boot up and acquire spy-blocking software (better to have more than one), and snatch up files in greater numbers than before the RIAA took their biggest step toward the funny farm when they began suing the public.

        Be warned:  That will be the day when they resort to outright thug tactics.  Suing a guy on the street for humming a Metallica song is only the beginning.  What's next?  Suing college and high-school bands for playing Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll" at football games, or worse, suing an aspiring singer for singing "I Will Always Love You" at a karaoke bar??

        Which makes it extremely hypocritical of the RIAA to claim that P2P is taking money out of the artists' pockets, while at many of their hearings they use the words copyright holders to refer to those who own the songs.  That is, in fact, to say nothing of the creators, who are the true owners.

        That's because most of them don't even own the copyrights to whatever they created.  The fact is that they are quite probably the last people to see a penny of whatever earnings the single or album brings in.  If they even get anything for their efforts.

        The rule of thumb in the pop world is that the average CD ceases to earn a significant amount of money for anyone, especially the fat cats, after 2 years.  Most singles cease to sell in significant numbers after 6 months, and most albums, after a year.  Once a CD drops off the charts, it's unlikely to sell more than 10,000 copies a year thereafter, and most artists are lucky if they sell 2,000 copies a year.

        What does that amount to?  Maybe $1,000 a year?  If the album is 10 years old and quite probably had long-since exhausted its ability to sell, how much does the artist expect to sell then?  Maybe $500 a year?

        In simpler language, such an album is no longer worth its full value, simply because it's been on the market for so long and has been exposed to the public for just as long.  You don't expect to pay $25,000 for a 1984 Corvette that's been driven for 40,000 miles on the same engine, do you?  So, how can anyone justify charging $20 for a 20-year-old CD (regardless how much of a huge classic it may be), or even $1 for the MP3 of any song that was recorded long ago (let alone any current hit), not to mention that the MP3 sound quality is inferior?

        That's what makes Metallica's rant about P2P a mystery, because their 13-million-selling untitled 1991 album (the black album) stopped selling in significant numbers 4 years before Napster was born, and I'd bet none of their other albums combined would have sold enough last year to put much more than $5,000 in their pockets, to split amongst themselves.

        Either complete copyright control is returned to the artists, producers and songwriters (that is, those who created those recordings) after a year since the production of any title, or the DMCA needs to be overhauled to return control of any material to its creators.  From what I've been reading and hearing, I think most of the copyright laws in the books need to be overhauled, and some repealed.

        Considering the RIAA's escalating hostility toward the consumers, they should be barred from participating in the overhaul procedures, because they'd only be there to serve the fat cats and deprive the independents of their rights as artists.  They will throw music back 50 years, when the owners of record labels used to put their names alongside the songwriters' to collect the royalties and cheat the artists out of their real earnings.

        I suppose by now there is a team of lawyers and individuals gathering evidence to bring the RIAA to a civil or criminal trial for willful collusion.  Sooner or later, the time will come when they file those charges, and the RIAA is dragged into court with an enormous amount of money in penalties hanging over their heads.

        When that time comes, and the RIAA loses, it will cease to exist as a legitimate organization, or even an organization that anyone will take seriously.  They'll be looked upon as a joke the next time they whine about the next technological breakthrough that will put the fat cats out on the street.  A union of independent artists (they ought to form a union right now, if they have not done so) could very well become 10 times more powerful than the RIAA, without being a nuisance to the consumers or an ass-kisser for industry fat cats.

        Speaking of copyright, do you know why the video-game industry is not actively pursuing rampant litigation against MAME Web sites (Web sites which contain downloads of the ROMs of classic video games) in as crazed a manner as the RIAA and MPAA?  Because if they did, no one born today or even 5 years ago would ever know that there used to be games like Space Panic, Cosmic Guerrilla, Gyruss, Burger Time, Arkanoid, Moon Cresta and the original Spy Hunter, among countless hundreds of games built since 1971.

        The fact is that, of the video games that were built and seen in arcades between 1971 and 1990, less than 2% can be found in any arcade today; namely, the greatest of all time, such as Space Invaders, Galaxian, Asteroids, Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man (which I consider the greatest ever), Donkey Kong, Mr. Do, Millipede and Galaga.  You may not believe this, but there is a fan base for some of the other 98%, and absolutely not a single video-game publisher or company will even consider putting any of the original ROMs of the most obscure of classics on CD to sell.

        Some companies may have the most popular classics (like Atari, with their Arcade Classics), but most are reproductions and remakes, not the original ROM classics.  As for the rest, a blizzard in July is more likely to happen, before a major video-game company (like Taito, if it still exists) decides to put the original ROMs of its many classics on a CD.

        If not, and they decide to go hog-wild like the RIAA, those classics will earn them absolutely nothing but more dust and spider webs in somebody's dark and dirty warehouse, a graveyard for classic video games long abandoned by today's arcades, never to be played again.

        Come to think of it, that's how it is for a great many songs that have been recorded in the history of music.  If it weren't for MP3 and file-sharing (which is no different than trading baseball cards), these classics would almost never be heard.  The fact that P2P exists, and that someone with the means to convert music to MP3 has a recording (vinyl, I presume) thought to have been long forgotten, ensures that at least someone out there is listening to it.  For all practical purposes, P2P right now is even bigger than all the radio stations in the world combined.

        Before I end this marathon commentary of mine, I have to leave you with this example:  Suppose I happened to have downloaded 1,000 singles from the P2P networks, and for each song I downloaded, I mailed a check for $1.50 for each downloaded track to the people who created it (artist, songwriter and producer), would I have a case against the RIAA if they sued?

        Remember, they stuck their feet in their mouths when they claimed that P2P is taking money right out of the artists' pockets, and I just put at least $1,500 back into their pockets.  Are they still going to claim copyright or royalty violation, or is it just a smokescreen to hide the fact that I bypassed the fat cats, and paid the artists directly?

        The first thing that the average Joe thinks about, when he hears an artist on the radio or sees the artist on video for the first time, is most certainly not what record label he or she is on.  Too bad for the fat cats that their record label can't be broadly advertised in an MP3 file beyond that of the embedded text portion of the MP3, because it's the music that matters first.  Hardly anyone is going to remember the label 25 years from now (especially if it goes bust), but the music will still be there.

        With any luck, there'll be a regime change, and the RIAA will have long-since been replaced by an organization that actually gives a fuck about the artists and the consumers, and isn't afraid to put the fat cats (if they still exist) on notice.

        But until then, KaZaA, K++, Grokster, Limewire, Gnucleus, Morpheus, iMesh, and any other P2P network, should advertise, on the front page of their Web site, every spy-blocking software that is available, including PeerGuardian and SpyBot Search and Destroy.  And if someone is sued for downloading a bunch of songs that can't be found in any store (and there are an awful lot of them, for which, P2P is the only place that is available), they'd have a very good excuse.

        The RIAA can try (in vain, I might add) to kill P2P, but what if, instead of P2P, file-sharers decide to send MP3 music directly by E-mail?  Suppose if someone has developed software to break up an MP3 track of any size into segments small enough to fit into someone's E-mail inbox without overstepping the storage limit, then send each segment by E-mail daily, along with the software to reassemble the fragments into a complete and seamless MP3 track?

        Bet the farm that it's already taking place right now (which is what I suspect when I see many Web sites with the words 'WinAmp Generated Media Playlist').  This idea bypasses the P2P Web sites and the RIAA spies infiltrating it.  Someone with a big MP3 library advertises his list, perhaps even his E-mail address, and someone wishing to trade or download an MP3 file leaves an E-mail address and/or maybe the opening fragment of an MP3 he wishes to trade, and the exchange takes place by E-mail.

        The only thing the MP3 supplier has to look out for is an RIAA spy, perhaps even one using a library computer with a HotMail address (so that he can't be traced back to the RIAA or its supporters), or even one who set up a list of MP3s at a Web site as bait for those wishing to download.

        Best for the real supplier to confine the E-mail downloads to people he or she knows and trusts; that'll keep Big Brother from engaging in any more undercover treachery.

        As for the mainstream radio stations, boycott them as well.  As a matter of fact, I think many listeners are giving satellite radio a try; and that's because the RIAA has many of the local stations in their pockets as well, quite probably encouraging many stations not to play tracks from a host of independent or non-RIAA-affiliated CDs, under threat of pressuring companies to withhold sponsorship, or worse.

        I think it's the same for many major record shops as well, despite the fact that there are many independent titles on the racks.  Sometimes it depends on what outside affiliation those independent labels have, that will decide whether or not the RIAA tries to keep their CDs off shelves.

        For better or for worse, the bottom line is that the RIAA is in deep shit.  Many people are predicting that they will not survive this decade.  Even Timothy White, the late editor-in-chief of Billboard, predicted (in February's Wired magazine, or was it March?) that the music business, as it is right now, will cease to exist in 5 years.

        And all because of this pathetic spectacle that we are forced to witness, which is The RIAA vs. The People of the United States.  The people will win, one way or the other, and the RIAA knows it, and the independents will almost certainly lead the way.  By 2010, some other organization (maybe SoundScan, if the RIAA doesn't have them under their thumb) will be handing out gold, platinum and diamond records.  I'd even wager that many CDs from independent labels have achieved gold status, and the RIAA has refused to even acknowledge them.

                                                                -CookyMonzta

*P.S.:  If I remember my history, the Somoza regime in Nicaragua was probably one of the most brutal regimes in Central America.  U.S. assistance (probably the CIA) helped to overthrow the regime in 1979, if I remember the year correctly.  Of course, in its place came the Sandinista regime, which, if I'm right, was a Marxist regime, which they probably prepared for even as the Somozas' downfall was being planned.

        From what I have read, it seems that KaZaA (which, strangely enough, is suing the creators of KaZaA Lite K++ for copyright infringement) is waiting for the RIAA to die so that they can be the big watchdog of the P2P industry.  And they almost certainly have big plans on the drawing board, and quite probably not in the best interests of the other P2P Web sites (Grokster, Morpheus, etc.).  Look at the new Napster, which I'm not so sure anyone will support in the numbers that existed in 2000, especially at 99¢ per MP3 that may only have a 128kbps bandwith rate.

        A dime at that bandwith, maybe; a dollar, absolutely not!  Buy 15 MP3s at Napster 2 (a full album's worth), and you're paying as much as you'd pay for a CD album in a record shop, and for lower sound quality.  A ripoff, indeed.

        Overthrowing one dictator, only to end up with another, is why I compared KaZaA's most recent activities to that of the Sandinistas when the Somozas were still in power.

P.P.S.:  I've just seen a masterpiece in Morgon O'Kelley's essay (from Boycott-RIAA.com post 8436, rebuttal to Marci Hamilton's sue-'em-all article).  It ranks right up there with Jon Newton, CodeWarrior and George Ziemann, whose splendid critiques would give Mr. and Ms. Sue-The-World (aka Cary Sherman and Hilary Rosen) migraines into the next decade.

        O'Kelley hit it right on the nose when he said that the battle was not about getting copyrighted music off the P2P networks, but shutting down the P2P networks altogether (the free ones, especially) and eliminate the independents' ability to reach their fan base.  The RIAA knows that their days as middlemen, leeches, primary agents of the industry fat cats, or whatever you want to call it, are coming to an end, and they're escalating their fight so close to the point of outright racketeering to stay in the game and/or in charge.