A Letter to the RIAA

Dear Recording Industry Association of America,

  How are you?  Things going slightly not good lately, I hear.  All these nasty thieves stealing your profits.  It must really be painful, after all the enjoyment you have helped bring into the world for all these many years.  I'm gonna offer some advice. 

  Don't piss your customers off.  How freakin' hard of a concept is that to grasp?  I mean, really.  I think maybe you guys are failing to understand something.  The government, they can piss people off.  We have nowhere else to go for the "services" they provide.  It seems to be becoming apparent that the same does not hold true for the services you provide.  See, this sueing of the little guys, that pisses people off.  Letting us all know that "Big Brother is watching?"  That pisses people off. 

  I'm gonna relate a story.  I like to tell stories.  Once upon a time, in the little town where I live, there existed a shopping center.  It had ample parking, and many stores.  Things were good.  Much money changed hands.  At night, after all the stores were closed, the local teens would park in the lot to make out and such things as teens do.  The proprietors of the shopping certer decided they didn't like this, and they began efforts to run these teens off.  The efforts were successful, after some time.  Flash forward many years, and the teens became the ones with the money and kids to spend said money on.  They took that money elsewhere.  Pretty well all the stores faded.  Why?  Because they pissed the customer off!  It was well within the rights of the businesses to run the teens off, it just wasn't a very damn good business decision.

  What is it worth to pursue these lawsuits?  The odds that they will ever be worth the cost is incredibly unlikely.  Do you really belive that most of the people who download songs would have bought the music if they hadn't found it for free?  I'm fairly sure that that is rarely the case. 

  The bottom line is this, the times they are a-changin'.  People just aren't buying music like they once did.  These things happen.  Times change, but so far the industry hasn't.  Adapt or fall by the wayside.  That is just the way it goes.  After all, those Chinese bootleggers get better all the time.