OUR VIEW: The cost of the world’s most expensive song
As the fight over the illegal downloading and sharing of music files wages on, the Recording Industry Association of America increasingly steps up its litigation, attacking one of the guiltiest category of culprits – college students.
The RIAA claims on its Web site, www.riaa.com, that college students were responsible for 1.3 billion illegal music downloads in 2006, contributing to an estimated $12.5 billion loss in revenue each year. So, in an effort to stop the trend of illegal downloading, the RIAA zeroes in on college campuses looking for students who participate in file and music sharing.
One of its most recent targets was a student on USU’s campus. This student was given a take-down warning back in September on a day when multiple other take down notices were delivered to USU students. But of all the many students at USU, this particular student was targeted.
This gross offender was targeted for having a staggering single song available for download. One song!
The price for this supposedly heinous act? An overwhelming $3,000 pre-litigation settlement offer.
Surely this price is a harsh sentence for a seemingly minor indiscretion. Don’t get us wrong, we don’t support the illegal downloading and sharing of music. It is as wrong as any other form of stealing. But a couple of questions just eat at us in this situation: 1. Is one song really worth $3,000? and 2. Why this student?
If a song costs about 99 cents to legally download and one song illegally downloaded apparently costs $3,000, the real racket here seems to be the RIAA, not the student with the song. The penalty seems pretty stiff and severe, not in the least proportional to the crime. One song cannot possibly be worth $3,000, even though some pop divas could use that extra dough right now.
Should the student be punished? Probably so, but so should every other person that commits this act. Let’s face it, if there were 300 robberies in a city and all 300 suspects were positively identified for their involvement in these crimes, would the police only choose one person to convict – the one who stole a grape-flavored lollipop from a baby? Of course not. They would go after all them. Justice is supposed to be blind, after all.
So if the RIAA is going to act like the police force for popular hip-hop, rap and country artists, they need to bring that blindfold back down and have those scales rebalanced.
But maybe what the RIAA was going after was to make an example out of this student. That’s fine, but history has shown that making an example out of someone does not produce voluntary compliance, rather an underlying hatred for the system and a brainstorming of new ways to create anarchy and outsmart those in control. If the RIAA were smarter about all this, they could send a stronger message by going after everyone caught in this practice and enforce penalties. This would show they were more action than mere spouters of platitudes about being avengers of creative music freedom.
And while we’re picking apart the follies of the RIAA’s tactics, let’s point out that its prime suspect group is college students. Most of these students didn’t suddenly learn about these programs while at the university level, they have been involved with this since high school on their parents computers. If the RIAA truly cares about preventing the downloading and sharing of music files, it should stop the problem where it begins, not wait until it has blossomed into a major problem.
We’re all about doing things legally, but if it’s to be done in that name, let justice truly be impartial.