What is the RIAA and why should you who they are?
In plain English, it's the records industries association. You probably heard them in the past on suing people for downloading illegal music via the internet.
I don't discourage downloading music because it's the new technology. I do however caution users on downloading music files online. If your doing it. Be careful. The RIAA are out there and they are monitoring you. They make believe there some innocent user who has a music library and when you download your favorite music file, they got you. How they do it from what I hear is that they grab your IP address from your file sharing software your using to download music. Depending on how many copyright songs you have downloaded from them, or depending how many illegal downloads they find from your IP address. They eventually sue you for the amount of copyright songs you have downloaded.
The sad thing is that the one's being sued are children under the age of 18 and the parents are the one's paying the bills. It's unfair for this to happen. But the RIAA cares not. And in most cases they just settle out of court, like always. I have yet to hear a case where someone who downloaded illegal music continued with there lawsuit. Everyone is just pleading guilty and paying penalties.
My belief is that if you want to download music do so, if you want to buy the CD or music do so. But why should these people be penalized for technology which is changing the world of music. It's not our fault that someone put music and technology and the internet all together. The record industry should take a different approach and some how profit in on music downloads instead going after innocent individuals. We should just boycott buying any music at all and then I bet the RIAA would change it's mind about suing. How's that boycott concept for you(the RIAA)?
