RIAA, This Is Earth, Please Come In!

ccnull writes "You might remember George Ziemann as the musician who found his own music banned from eBay because it was recorded on CD-R. Now he's back with a new rant about the RIAA's statistics, which blame piracy for the dire condition of the music industry. What's to blame? Price hikes and fewer titles. The latest rant (including analysis of the RIAA's own data) is mainly circulating by email, here's a readable link. (As an interesting side note, Ziemann says that songs are really just ads for CDs, and thus should be freely traded.)"

Comments

RIAA has no hard numbers on piracy

[product byproduct]

The essentials are missing:

• Number of active pirate ships.
  
• Number of CD shipment boats attacked per year.
  
• Number of CDs per boat.
  
• Number of pirates per ship.
  
• Number of parrots per ship (if available).
  

They're not stupid...

[Thedalek]

The RIAA isn't really stupid per se. They're just faced with the following scenario:

Mr. Big Bucks: My record sales are slipping. Make them better again.

RIAA: Well, there's a few things affecting your sales. There's your own high prices and lackluster quality...

Mr. Big Bucks: Are you planning on getting paid?

RIAA: ...And... uh... There's Internet Piracy! Yes, that's it.

Mr. Big Bucks: Guess which one we can do something about.

RIAA: High prices?

Mr. Big Bucks: You are clearly delerious from the lack of money in your pockets. Here's a few million. Feel better now?

RIAA: Oh, we go after piracy?

Mr. Big Bucks: Excelsior.