Editor,
The mob often takes out its enemies in a gruesome fashion as a way to warn others to fall in line.
That could be said about the campaign over the past four years instigated by the dreaded Recording Industry Association of America, which has been on a mission to stop or slow down the practice of illegal music downloading from the Internet.
The main target, as most of you could have noticed from the Daily Lobo, is college students. In an effort to step up the pace, the RIAA began sending pre-lawsuit letters to universities.
UNM had received some of them, asking it to forward them to students associated with certain Internet accounts in question. The RIAA asks first for a few thousand dollars in payment and warns that the computer owner could face a federal lawsuit.
It is trying to scare us by sending a blunt message: Downloading free music using peer-to-peer networks could cost you dearly. These are clearly extortion methods like those of the mafia - pay or you go to federal court.
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There is no room for negotiation with the RIAA. Many students are wrongfully targeted, and most of them are settling for several thousands of dollars because they fear even bigger legal costs or fines down the road.
What is the RIAA going to say to the thousands of kids who had to drop out of school to make the association richer? "I'm sorry, but I believe they have enough money"?
There is no doubt that music is culture and that students should have access to all kinds of culture. The record companies are asking us to pay a lot of money for our music, an amount that most students cannot afford, depriving us of what should be our right.
The RIAA claims that it wants to help musicians, but here are a few facts that most people don't know. Every CD recorder has a $2 surcharge built into the price that goes directly to the RIAA. Also, artists received not 1 cent of the money from the Mp3.com settlements of approximately $158 million to the labels.
Also, every music CDR, since the Audio Home Recording Act was enacted, has a hidden tax built into the price. This is supposedly to pay the artists for home recording. Who collects the tax? The RIAA under the auspices of the Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies.
But there seems to be no artist in the U.S. who has received 1 cent of this money. Internet and peer-to-peer networks are becoming a big issue in our lives and are bringing about change in the way people do business. Record companies should realized this and change their marketing models.
The CD is becoming obsolete, as the cassette and vinyl did. Now is the time for new ways of making music - new ways in which the record labels probably won't fit.
Marco Gutierrez
UNM student
