RIAA verses the world, and a return to Music Guilds?

Seems that RIAA are intent on sueing more 12-year old girls for sharing music... it sickens me.

I am not sure what to do to protest (beyond what seems to be happening already — consumers aren't buying today's crap, and RIAA/ARIA/MPAA etc are just blaming it on the Net anyway). I am considering what would happen if lots of fans started writing directly to their favourite artists and asking them these questions:

• why do you have this deal with your distributor EMI? I can't play your music, so I will not buy from them, even though I love your group.
• why don't you consider putting sample tracks on your web site? For that matter, why don't you deal directly with Apple, or start your own pay-per-download site for your songs? I'm sure heaps of fans like me will buy them, and you could get a much larger cut per track than Warner Bros is giving you

Of course, there are costs to running a web site also. But I wonder if what may happen eventually is a return to music guilds, where a guild runs the site, member groups contribute content and all proffit goes to the members. It would probably be a good business to start, atracting new groups like the “Idol” TV shows do now. Shame I have hopeless business sense though.

Filed in: rant copyright media