A good defense doesn't necessarily mean attack:

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The resolution of the Negativeland/RIAA controversy demonstrates how more reasonable was Negativeland than the RIAA, only this explains why a truly powerful organization like the RIAA had to admit (not without hipocresy) a defeat against a group like Negativeland, thaks to the popular pression.

All this is due to the fact that the Negativeland's concept of fair use was totally correct. A music collage made from or with other musical pieces must not be considered piracy, just it is not the same in painting to copy an existing work than to make an original creation with elements taken from a previously existing piece. Or was ever Picasso acused for piracy when he painted the series on Velazquez's Las Meninas? [see picures]

Negativeland is for creativity and free expression, and their case with the RIAA demonstrates that this last organization has gone too far in their will to control the music production in the USA. In this case, RIAA tried to impose their view using all the possible ways, and giving the unafordable and unrealistic alternative to Negativeland to pay and ask permission for all the samples used.

But though they had to admit their error in that case, their activity focused only merely in the bussines side of music and helping the already succesful musicians continues. RIAA didn't doubt to use fascist techniques to impose their will in the fair use case, like intimidating the cd manufacturers in this case, and they continue that way. Their only concern about internet filesharing is that the music industry (and thus themselves) is loosing money, and their newest techniques agains peer to peer users are even worse than those in 1998: producing great doses of damage to individuals in order to terrorize the hole population. This is their technique.

No doubt that piracy is harmful and that something should be done about it, but this is just not the way! The RIAA is only concerned in how it is damaging their bussiness and lowering their incomes, but they forget two basic issues here: first of all, music copying (and p2p sharing is nothing but copying) has been done since the cassetes were released, and it would be unrealistic not to admit that a lot of musicians have become more popular because of that, which permited a greater circulation of their work. Suing privat p2p users is no different that it would be like entering and someone's house and suing him or her for the copied cassetes and cds sotored in the shelves. Secondly, this popular reaction to p2p use is a result of the abusive prices of the so called comercial music.

The RIAA should rethink their function as an art police, and get less focused in the police side and more in the artistic. Suing privat music copiers is not the way to go, and the RIAA should focus on more constructive ways of ending with piracy (there's a quality issue in the RIAA products that could largely be discussed, and that is not that unrelated to this matters) and helping new emerging musicians to evolve using the internet to reach the maximum possible audience. It is true that the actual state of things could end with the whole music industry, but this industry is already not really helping the artistic side of contemporary electric and electronic music.

Maybe a smart combination of free distribution and low prices could help. Musical education to the public instead of offering always the same with new names would surely help, and here plays an important role the free distribution of mp3 and videos, for example, like does the minoritary group Kitsch. In their web page you can download demos and videos, and if you like them buy the cds at really reasonable prices. Of course if the group were more famous you could also find the cds on kazaa, but there is your criteria as a music listener to determine if it's worth or not to spend 10 dollars in a cd and help the group's existence go on.

The musicians, like all other artists, deserve to be payed for what they do so they can go on doing it, but using the internet as a tool for direct distribution may help broaden the audience. Find the equilibrium between comerce and free distribution, given the existing tools and those to come, is the essential point, here, but always keeping in mind that is (or should be) about art we are talking about, not any other conventional consumism item.