US Press Does Best to Ignore Antitrust Suit Against RIAA

By George Ziemann -- October 13, 2003

The RIAA was warned. They continued to act like terrorists. So the Webcaster Alliance has stepped forward to do what the government should have done on its own long ago, filing a suit against the RIAA, charging two counts of violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

The press, for the most part, has totally ignored this story. Most of them simply re-posted a skeletal story by the Associated Press. The only media that I saw that addressed any of the facts behind the Webcaster Alliance's position was the Register from the UK. Most notable is the fact that the London site was the only one to mention that the royalty agreement in question was put into place by Congressman Sensenbrenner, "forcing the negotiating webcasters to cut a deal with the RIAA or leave his congressional staff to write a deal for them." It also bears note that Sensenbrenner enjoyed an all-expense paid trip to Taiwan, courtesy of the RIAA. The Register was also the only press outlet to mention that the Library of Congress has already established a finding of fact that in the Yahoo! Agreement RIAA members artificially inflated royalty fees, the Librarian noting that "the RIAA created a virtually uniform precedent with rates above those that most buyers would be willing to pay."

I personally find the Washington Post to be the most aggregious sellout to the RIAA, hiding the press release on the antitrust suit as an inside page footnote, while running a feature story on the RIAA's propaganda campaign on the college campuses, a one-sided report comparing downloading to shoplighting and drug use, full of half-truths and quotes from the RIAA's head of disinformation, Cary "Sue" Sherman.

In fact, the RIAA, according to the AP reports has dismissed this suit as frivolous and a publicity stunt. Not surprising, in light of the fact that not a dime has been paid out as a result of the last antitrust suit against them by the Federal Trade Commission, a result of price-fixing by the major labels and which they settled out of court. Millions of consumers were supposed to be paid a check by the RIAA by July. No one has yet to receive one.

Add to this the fact the a US District Court judge in the Napster case acknowledge that the RIAA was, in fact, a monopoly and that another judge determined that the labels had cheated songwriters out of millions in royalties by running swap meet sales through the record clubs. Not satisfied with that, Columbia House then decided to carefully avoid paying out damages by trying to extort payments from its members or remove them from the membership list.

We were told in school that justice is blind but, much as many of the details of history were deleted from our schoolbooks, the fact that justice is deaf and dumb was left out as well. Microsoft was allowed to continue to be a monopoly, receive almost no punishment for its anticompetitive behavior and was even rewarded by winning a contract for national computer security. I find this highly ironic, considering that Microsoft software is so poorly written and so full of intentional security flaws that it invites a daily parade of viruses, as evidenced by the more than 400 copies of the SoBig virus that have been directed at my e-mail address in the last three days.

It seems only fitting that a foreign-owned corporation employing terrorist tactics in violation of our right to privact is allowed carte blanche to snoop in everyone's computer, make accusations on the assumption that we are all guilty until proven innocent and run rampant over the courts, lie to Congress and in government hearings, threaten webcasters and educational instutions, all to protect their outright monopoly of the market for recorded music.

First of all, there is simply no empirical evidence to suggest that anything has caused the drop in music sales other than declaring the American consumers to be thieves, unless it was the intentional reduction of new releases while simultaneously raising prices. The "statistics" provided by the RIAA show nothing tangible at all, except that an average of $4 billion is sent out in free physical goods each year, exactly the amount that the RIAA's former head deceiver claimed to be the cost of "online piracy." Coincidence? I think not.

Is Anybody Out There?

As much as the antitrust suit by the Webcaster Alliance is a great step forward, provided they can afford to pursue it to the end (please donate -- see sidebar at above right), for me, personally, this is pretty much the end of the road. In a week, it will have been one year exactly since the band I was in released a CD. In that year, I have learned one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt -- you cannot enter the market for recorded music without an RIAA contract. That's a price I will never pay.

For an independent artist who has not already been through the contract in blood, managed to achieve some degree of fame and somehow escaped from the clutches of the labels (Natalie Merchant, Lou Reed, CSN, Simply Red, Pearl Jam), it si impossible to get airplay or distribution in today's world. For a while, it seemed as if the Internet was going to save music, but I can readily see that the RIAA has purchased enough of the government to criminalize our only entry to the market. It has been done through lies and deceit, misinformation and half-truths, but apparently our elected representatives are either too stupid or have a total lack of ethics.

The biggest lie, of course, is that it is illegal to share copyrighted material. If this were true, there would be no public library system, as this is every library's sole function.

This is all so disheartening to me that I am on the edge of giving up music forever. At this point in time, I have no desire to play music or hear another song for the rest of my life. My "heros" have all sold out, care nothing of their fans and all refuse to step forward and tell the truth. I am truly sorry that I wasted so much money during my lifetime on recorded music. The songs, the messages are all shallow lies. Those who inspired us in the 70s with protests are nowhere to be found, now part of the authority that they professed to rebel against.

I can say with certainty that I will never buy another recording again in my life. I never have been a downloader, preferring to offer my own music and that of other artists trying to gain the public's ear. But the public is unaware, blissfully ignorant of what the future has in store for them as our country slowly turns into a twisted version of Nazi Germany in the 30s. Music is illegal, speaking out against the government or war, once a noble position, draws the wrath of the consumers, gets you blackballed from the radio and openly criticized by the very people who once supported freedom of speech.

Day by day our rights are taken away in the name of security. The government is passing laws to make dancing and music illegal, attributing the sale of water as evidence of drug use, a willingness to question the government as evidence of terrorist activity. The copyright laws, designed to protect the artists from the publishers' greed is now slanted in the favor of the "copyright owners" who ARE those same publishers, giving them complete monopolistic control and abetting the pay-per-listen business model being established for the benefit of the distinct minority of foreign-owned labels that the RIAA represents.

We are denied our freedom of choice, no longer allowed to select the music we choose to listen to, as this is nowclassified as an offense which can be used to publicly humiliate anyone with enough sense to choose something other than the redundant Clear Channel broadcasts, which the FCC has somehow decided is beneficial to its defined duty of promoting localism and independence. The airwaves were supposed to belong to the public. Now Clear Channel owns them.

As a musician, I can state honestly that we have even lost those basic liberties promised in the Declaration of Independence, especially pursuit of happiness. There is no happiness left in music, just the pursuit of money. No idealism is left, no ethics, no morality. After more than 30 years of pursuing a dream, of pursuing my personal happiness, I find that once I got close enough to see it, the only thing tthat really drives music in the 21st century is the love of money -- the root of all evil.

God has forsaken us all. May He have mercy on our souls, for He has had no mercy on our lives or careers. No one wants to write a song any longer unless they can expect to sell millions of copies. Art has been replaced with greed and corruption. There is no joyful noise to raise unless we pay royalties to the evil minions of the RIAA. America stands for corporate power, not the rights of the citizens. Is this what the men and women have fought for and given their lives for over the past 225 years? If not, why has it allowed to get this far?

Whatever the answer, it is no longer my fight. I'm going to have to save myself and turn into a greedy bastard like everyone else in the country, thinking only of myself, with regard to no one, just to try to recover what I've lost by following my heart, which is now turning into a stone, impenetrable and unfeeling. It's the new American way.

After the fund-raiser for the webcasters on Sept. 1, there will never again be a song in my heart and I will stop trying to share myself with others for the sake of art and beauty. It is an utter waste of time and no one really cares. No one wants to hear the truth. I shall no longer waste my time trying.