Hardware Geeks

The RIAA has had a lot of crazy ideas over the past year; from suggesting that Anti-Virus programs scan your PC for illegal content, to having ISPs install filters on their network.

But now they have an idea to tax your internet bill 5 extra dollars a month, to compensate money they are losing to file sharing. The money would go into a pool and depending on an artist popularity that artist will get a bigger or smaller chunk of that money.

So let me get this straight, they want to charge 5 bucks a month to each and every internet user. There are over 165 million internet users in the US, now lets do the math.

165,000,000 internet users x $5.00 = 825,000,000

So in other words the Record Industry wants over 825 million dollars a month. Are they crazy? Do they think we are stupid? They are the stupid ones!

The RIAA has said that the music industry loses billions each year due to piracy, but the greedy bastards for lack of a better word want over 800 to 900 million a month? That’s nearly a billion dollars a month. Sure record sales has dropped but so has the quality of music, over the past 10 years.

Those of you who know me know, that I personally think piracy is bad, and you’d also know that I avoid downloading music illegally. I subscribe to Microsoft Zune for my music and I happily pay 15 dollars a month. I have downloaded music illegally in the past, maybe a max of 5 or 6 songs more like 100 when I was in high school, and back then I also use to hang out in warez IRC chat rooms, but once I started making money there was no need for that. I gladly bought CD’s and paid for digital downloads.

I thought the RIAA had a legitimate fight and supported them at first, but over the past year or so; their tactics have reminded me of the same tactics the Mafia use to employ. Now they want 5 dollars a month from each internet user. Sounds like they are out to make a profit and not protect their clients interest, and I doubt much of any money collected will end up in the hands of artist.

In-fact some artist are threatening to sue the RIAA because they have yet to see any money from the them.

You know what if this somehow gets approved and my internet bill has an RIAA surcharge for the RIAA on it, I will cancel my subscription to Microsoft Zune, I will stop buying CDs and I will solely get my music from the internet for free, because after all it’s no longer free if you have to pay for it.

So all I have to say is. RIAA WHAT THE F*#@?

Updated: Pulled an Al Gore with the math, so I corrected it.

Post Tags: music  isp  riaa  tax 

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