RIAA
vs.
MUSIC PIRATES

Is Shawn Fanning the blame? What about 12 yr. Old Brianna Lahara or Sarah Seabury, a sixty-five yr. Old women who was sued by the RIAA for downloading free music. Has downloading music for free on the Internet affecting hip-hop album sells? According to the RIAA they are, but how? Say you have a new artist on an established record label. He/she has a hot song on the street, but the sells on the single are not so good, because of downloading. Now its time for this artist album to be released, and his/her album have been online for free downloading two weeks before the original release date. Due to downloading this artist has been affected by poor album sells, plus depending on his/her contract, this artist can loose up to $80,000. Because of poor album sells this artist will have a hard time touring, and if this artist doesn't tour he/she cannot push the album further and the artist looses more money. Now its time for your second album to be released and the executives don't believe that your album will do so well, so they will turn their attention to the next artist. Now your dreams of becoming the biggest rap star and changing the game have turn into a nightmare. The RIAA a taking drastic measures to prevent people from downloading free music. One; they've released a commercial with rap artist such as DMX asking fans to stop download music for free. They also have sent IM (Instant Messages) to those who they think are downloading numerous files. The IM reads trading copy written songs is illegal and hurts the songwriter and musician. Now they are making examples out of downloaders by suing them for large sums of money. Shawn Fanning the founder of Napster.com was sued by 18 major record companies for offering free downloadable music, also Daniel Peng of Princeton University was also sued by the RIAA and has to pay $15,000 in penalties. Congress even wants to make downloading free music a felony crime. Downloaders on the other hand feel that these acts against them are pointless and extreme. Downloaders feel with artist such as 50 cents who sold 4 million copies of "Get rich or die tryin" which the highest selling rap album of 2003. In 2000 Eminem sold 1.7 million copies in a week with "The Marshall Mathers LP," and Nas, who sold 343,000 copies of his album had the highest selling debut album with "Stillmatic." All of these albums are available on file-sharing web sites, but all three of these artist albums reached platinum status. With artist like Jay-z, Nelly, Ja-Rule, and many others rap artist with multi-platinum albums they feel that they are not affecting albums sells at all. So why don't downloaders buy CD's out of the store? Downloaders say the download because albums are expensive and most of them are not so good and they end up liking two songs out of sixteen. They also believe its fun and cheaper, because of the poor economy. Downloaders feel that they aren't affecting the artist in the pockets because of shows like MTV Cribs that displays artist wealth. Downloaders feel that they are being treating worst than bootleggers that are on the street. They feels its easier to catch bootleggers with numerous amounts of the same album that they have downloaded once, so why don't they have the same extreme laws against bootleggers and they've been around before the computer downloaders ask. So what happens next in the war on downloading, the saga continuous.

Edioral Written by: J.O.

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