Wednesday, June 24, 2009
National Skyline Richard Marx: Music Industry Is Greedy, RIAA Lawsuit 'Farcical'
Posted by Steve Haruch on Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 12:32 PM
You may have heard that the RIAA won a lawsuit against 32-year-old mother Jammie Thomas-Rasset for the unthinkable sum of $1.92 million, which works out to $80,000 per illegally downloaded song. One of those songs was "Now and Forever" by Richard Marx, which, in addition to not being worth $80,000, sucks. But! Richard Marx has issued a statement in which he calls the settlement against Thomas-Rasset "farcical," and ends up sounding like a pretty solid dude.
As a longtime professional songwriter, I have always objected to the practice of illegal downloading of music. I have also always, however, been sympathetic to the average music fan, who has been consistently financially abused by the greedy actions of major labels. These labels, until recently, were responsible for the distribution of the majority of recorded music, and instead of nurturing the industry and doing their best to provide the highest quality of music to the fans, they predominantly chose to ream the consumer and fill their pockets.So now we have a "judgment" in a case of illegal downloading, and it seems to me, especially in these extremely volatile economic times, that holding Ms. Thomas-Rasset accountable for the continuing daily actions of hundreds of thousands of people is, at best, misguided and at worst, farcical. Her accountability itself is not in question, but this show of force posing as judicial come-uppance is clearly abusive. Ms. Thomas-Rasset, I think you got a raw deal, and I'm ashamed to have my name associated with this issue.
[Ars Technica via Mashable]
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