You know what? Fuck the Bush Administration.

Here's the deal on this whole music sharing business: everyone is wrong. People swapping music are wrong. Artists are wrong. The RIAA is wrong.

Here's the deal: people like free shit. Nothing beats free stuff, except for free sex. Hell, even paid sex probably beats some free stuff, but I'm losing focus here. You know who really likes free stuff? College students, because so many of them are fucking broke. In the end, though, music swapping is illegal, and it does harm music sales. Stay with me here for a second.

Here's why it's illegal. Let me get this straight: I can get something for free, that normally I would have to pay for? How is that not illegal?

People, the kind you find prevalent on Slashdot, like to argue that music piracy actually helps music sales. Here's one reason why it actually hurts music sales. I have seen people with cases full of nothing but burned CDs. I know that there have got to be tons more people out there who are like that. Are there other things that hurt music sales? Sure, but we'll get to that in a minute.

Finally, in my tough-love-for-the-college-kids segment, here's an end to one of their stupid arguments. They always being up the fact that the music industry fought against things like cassette tapes, and lost. They argue that this is the same fair use situation - only it isn't. With recording things on cassette, it wasn't very easy to immediately distribute music to potentially millions of users, unlike with internet file swapping.

That being said, recording artists are nothing but a bunch of whiny pussies. I wanted to vomit everytime Lars got in front of a microphone and started complaining about "control over his myuuusic". You don't make music Lars, you make noise.

Okay, look, my hammering on Lars is partly because I think Metallica blows ass, except for the Black Album. Anyway, the artists you always heard complaining were ones who are fucking rich. They're not coming out against Napster and whatnot because they're offended as artists, they're coming out because they're offended as capitalists. Napster is not taking food out of your kids' mouths, Dre. You could buy other peoples' children and feed them to your children if it ever got really bad, so knock it off.

You never really heard a lot of lesser known artists making such a big stink about this, ya know. Which makes sense, because file sharing actually does have benefits for lesser known or completely unknown artists.

Finally, the (dire) RIAA is nothing but a bunch of fucking asshole pricks. Yes, they have some good points, but I don't care for their blitzkrieg tactics. This idea that they're suing four college students is obscene, because they know that the lawsuit will do nothing but make an example. That's not justice; that's McCarthyism.

While file sharing does hurt music sales, the RIAA needs to realize that it's not the only thing harming music sales. Another detriment to sales is the fact that there's a lot of shitty fucking music out there. It seems like mainstream music is nothing more than the same noisy, uninteresting, rehashed crap. Every new act I see seems like a bad re-make of Korn and Limp Bizkit, two bands no one has cared about for like two fucking years.

In the end, lots of people are weirdo fundamentalists, and they will pay for something that they feel deserves being paid for. I have downloaded entire albums on MP3, and then gone and paid for the actual fucking album. But there are still some people who are more interested in dollars than principle.

I also think the RIAA is just pissed off because they haven't figured out a way to make file sharing work to their advantage. Since they're not clever enough for that, they're just going to sue the idea into oblivion. Greedy fucks, just like the "artists" they represent.

I guess what I'm realy trying to say to everyone on each side of this file sharing debate is, shut the fuck up.