RIAA’s War on File-Sharing can’t stop criminal masterminds

My friends and I are criminals. We exchange our goods in plastic baggies, slipping them… My friends and I are criminals. We exchange our goods in plastic baggies, slipping them furtively into backpacks. We huddle in dank basements on weekend nights, bodies slumped against sagging couches, eyes glazed, pizza just a click away. On special occasions, one of my friends will come down from Buffalo with something really good and we’ll spend the day indoors, sitting around, tuning in and dropping out.

My friends and I are criminals. Our crimes? File sharing and copyright infringement.

The language of file sharing is a bit like the language of drugs. The simplest acts are given quasi-heroic terminology — ripping, burning, scoring — as if what we’re doing takes more than a few mouse-clicks and some already ample right hand strength.

In keeping with this epic language, the Recording Industry Association of America wants to make it seem like we’re villains, some sort of criminal network of maniac masterminds who want to rob poor, starving artists of their last crusts of bread. It’s a bit like how the U.S. government wants to make it seem like drug users are terrorists with bongs.

The RIAA recently brought a suit against 405 university affiliates including students at Pitt and CMU, tracking specific songs to specific John and Jane Does. Given that I’d rather deliver an economics presentation naked than have it revealed publicly that I downloaded “What a Girl Wants” — thanks, Doe # 7! — what the RIAA doesn’t seem to realize is that it’s a Goliath flinging rocks at several hundred little Davids.

While the RIAA’s goofs in suing preteens and the deceased have been well publicized, no one seems to be discussing the more important matter — whether file sharing should be kosher. No one’s speaking on behalf of the criminals, because we’re too ashamed to admit that, in the most basic terms, free things are better than costly ones.

The music industry has always been corporate. From denying copyrights to early blues musicians to the image-manufactured early Beatles to the current spate of overproduced pop, the music industry is about making the fat cats’ pockets a little fatter.

Are the downloaders therefore rebels? Are they fighting an inherently corrupt system by making music less of a consumer product and more what it’s supposed to be: art? Well, that’s a little romanticized. Neither my criminal friends nor I think we’re Robin Hoods, stealing from the rich and giving to ourselves.

But there’s no denying that the RIAA’s reactive approach — suing our broke college selves — is acutely ineffective in winning the hearts and minds of most music-purchasers. Instead, it’s a horrible public relations gaffe, since most people, even the law-abiding ones, will side with the kids and not the corporation.

Now, the RIAA certainly doesn’t want to win popularity contests with its lawsuits. In the long run, it would benefit more from being seen positively than recouping its monetary losses. The more lawsuits it files, the more illegal downloading becomes a sort of happy challenge to people like me. We’re not just stealing; we’re fighting The Man, and that’s something of which the public can approve.

In a recent article for The New Republic, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich wrote that an intrinsic part of successful political narrative is attacking the rot at the top — what people see as corporate and political bigwigs, complete with top hats, watch fobs and too much money. The RIAA is that rot at the top, at least in the minds of penniless college students and our technologically flustered parents. And when the rot comes after you and yours, it’s the big guys, not the little ones, who’re going to look like villains.

Much has been made of providing legalized forms of file sharing and mp3 downloading. iTunes and the new money-charging Napster may lack the criminal appeal of scoring a really rare bootleg for free, but most audiophiles would rather pay for a clean file than risk downloading something that’s been stacked with spyware or cut with god-knows-what. If it sounds like I’m comparing iTunes to a methadone clinic, it’s because, at least to me, that’s what it is — a safe, legal way to get a good fix.

Along these lines, the RIAA needs to stop its current War on File-Sharers and address the real issues: that its methods are antiquated and its motives greedy. Rather than taking cash from Joe College and giving it to poor, smudge-faced waifs like Christina Aguilera, it should actively innovate.

People keep coming up with new ways to steal and share files. The RIAA should stop prosecuting these geniuses and hire them. And instead of shutting down people who distribute torrent software — a super-fast way to transfer enormous files — they should adapt the technology into the legitimate industry.

To the Pitt and CMU students who’ve been smacked with lawsuits: My thoughts and files are with you. As for my hoodlum friends and me, we’ll be in a basement in an undisclosed location, cranking our speakers and laughing maniacally.

E-mail criminal mastermind Sydney Bergman at sbergman@pittnews.com.