What percentage of album sales go to the artists from the RIAA is another debate.

If I were an artist, I might choose to promote myself by distributing unrestricted MP3’s, but at the same time I would be very dissapointed if my albums were for sale and also being downloaded illegitimately. Some argue that artists like this who get upset “forgot their roots”, but I don’t buy that either. Does anyone get legitimately upset at artists who handed out free demos at their shows, and then started selling their full albums for a profit once they were discovered?

In the end however, my views on the RIAA and the state of digital music downloads are not shaped by whatever actions may be necessary to curb digital bootleggers. They are shaped by one thing and one thing only: what constitutes fair usage of the music I purchase.

I cannot feel sympathetic to the actions comany who infringes on my fair useage rights with restrictive DRM due to the actions of others, or the fear of what I might or might not do with that album I’ve purchased.

I’m a licensed webcaster that streams his mp3 collection. For my purposes, many digit download sites are useless because their terms of service will prohibit the streaming of tracks that are purchased from them.

I won’t hold my breath waiting for the RIAA to act in a more measured, reasonable manner. Nor will I have any sympathy for the college students that get sued by them. The downloader’s sense of entitlement is incredible.

My pet peeve with the illegal downloader is his tiresome attempts to justify it on monetary grounds….

“Metallica and those record companies, they are all greedy millionaires, it won’t hurt them when I download their album for free. It actually helps them, it gets their music heard by more people”.

So you’re downloading an album illegally because you can, and because you don’t feel like paying for it… and you want to convince me that it is someone else in this picture that is the greedy one? Look in the nirror!

You know it is wrong, but you do it anyway – because you want free music, and because odds are tiny that you’ll ever be held accountable. It is that simple.

Don’t try to tell us that you do it because the music distribution industry has fallen decades behind the times, or because the record industry is greedy and they should be taken down a notch, or because you’re playing a role in socio-economic class warfare. Quit making lame excuses for your actions.