1. They have made many of their long-term adult customers so angry with insane DRM and gestapo extortion tactics against our kids that we have completely stopped buying music from them. I spent literally thousands of dollars on music before they began their DRM campaign. I haven't bought a piece of music since. I refuse to buy from people who treat their best paying customers like criminals.
2. They are making the NEXT generation of music buyers even MORE angry by targeting poor college students with insane fines for exchanging music with friends and classmates. Trading a $1 song to their friend gets them a choice between a $5,000 fine or a prolonged legal battle costing even more. What happened to damages matching the offense? This is extortion of the helpless plain and simple, and the idiots in our capital are facilitating it. Our legal system is being abused as a profit source and personal police force for a bunch of clueless old farts in an antique industry.
3. Despite vast evidence that they are killing their own sales (present and future), they continue to pursue a marketing approach they created the better part of a century ago. While every other industry has been forced to adopt new paradigms in the digital age, the RIAA members seem to be stubbornly stuck in the 1940's. They frantically pursue legal action to keep their old business model because they are too stupid to figure out how to adapt.
4. They still spend a fortune pursuing the poor students who are not making any money with their music rather than pursuing the REAL criminals who are duplicating and selling their products around the world.
Personally, I never give anyone a copy of a song I buy. I figure people with jobs can buy their own if they want it. But when I was in college (decades ago LOL) students traded tapes of albums they bought. These days, it's MP3's. It was part of being a starving student. When I graduated and got a job, I bought thousands of dollars in music, because my experience listening to music in college hooked me on music. The RIAA members are ruining their own future income by targeting poor college/high school students. When those students become working adults who can afford music, they will remember how they were treated by the RIAA members.
I hope the RIAA members all go bankrupt so we can finally get a new music industry run by companies like Google and Amazon, who know how to make money AND make their customers happy.
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