Online music sales plummet -- Recording industry blames file-sharing. Jeez, that's terrible. In general, I support property rights as an essential guarantor of freedom. Intellectual property rights, the exclusive right to profit from one's own efforts and inspiration, are particularly sacred.
A friend recently described my musical tastes as bipolar. I don't think that covers it. The CD case I have in my briefcase has works by Sibelius, Beethoven, the Ramones, Al Green, Frank Zappa, Aretha Franklin, Rancid, the Velvet Underground, Mozart, and Sam and Dave. The Sam of this last group is Sam Moore. He had a rather unpleasant experience when he retired. He found he could not do it -- he has to keep working. Here is a link to the article in the LA Times about the lawsuit he and other former stars have filed against these same people who are so upset about being ripped off by KaZaA. Turns out that these defenders of intellectual property have (1) screwed the artists by not paying the required amounts, or often anything, into the AFTRA pension plan, and (2) screwed them again by not paying them royalties. Now AFTRA, which is a separate legal entity from the AFTRA pension plan, is shocked -- SHOCKED -- to find out this injustice has occurred, and is joining the artists in the part of the suit targeting the pension plan (as I mentioned, it is a SEPARATE LEGAL ENTITY, despite the similarity of the names). Did I forget to mention that AFTRA is in the middle of an election to continue to represent the artists? Oopsie, my bad.
