REWIND Don't Like the RIAA? DELETE Them From P2P by George Ziemann -- Oct 6, 2007 Time to recycle some old advice... Feb. 28, 2003 -- The recording industry continues to claim that downloading is ruining their business. It's cutting into their sales, they say. The major labels do not want us to download their music for free. Up until now, the only counterpoint to this rhetoric has been that people do more file sharing than ever. This will never work. I say we give the RIAA exactly what they have asked for. If we do, they'll shut up and never bother us about file sharing again. If we all stop listening to them for 2 or 3 months, they'll be begging us to start downloading again. Unfortunately, that's an awful big "if". I hate to say it, but the American public is much too possessed by the desire for instant gratification to carry out such a plan. I'd love to be proven wrong. March 30, 2003 -- Worried about the RIAA snooping in your hard drive? Dump all of those major labels songs. There are a million songs out there that they don't control, copyrighted or not. Worried about getting caught downloading one of those songs? Don't do it. Don't download a major label song if you don't know for sure that it isn't authorized. Are the artists really paying to put their songs on the radio? Turn the damn thing off. All you hackers that have been wasting your time and energy breaking the law to fight these guys? Go to work for them. Empty the P2P network of all major label songs. Fill it up with independent music, especially those newly-independent artists that have showed they know what's going on. Take away all the unauthorized songs. If you do that, several things happen. 1) The RIAA has absolutely no way to accuse anyone of anything. 2) The next generation of music will come from the independents because we will own P2P. And it won't cost us -- or the consumers -- a dime in payola or free goods deductions. 3) The public discovers that there's a lot more music that they haven't been allowed to hear than what they're getting from the five or seven percent that are asking us NOT to listen to their free ads, aka mp3 files. And just like the stuff coming from the labels, some of it is good, some of it may not be, according to your tastes. But it's all free. We want you to use our music. The RIAA will prosecute your for listening to theirs. Continue to download and upload RIAA music and you fuel their bogus claims. Four and a half years later, I still say this is the only way to change things. The only "illegal" music out there still all belongs to them. Delete the RIAA. Do it for your children. Do it for music.