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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 5370625" data-attributes="member: 19675">As an Entertainment attorney (and musician) who has used RIAA resources to help my clients, yes, I can support them in general.  BTW, I hope you realize that the RIAA has among its membership artist-owned labels, and that most artists cannot afford to prosecute the kinds of cases the RIAA can.  Without the RIAA, you probably wouldn't be able to hear a lot of music in TV shows because the producers would have to negotiate with each and every band individually as opposed to paying a pre-negotiated rate.  (Check out <a href="http://www.riaa.com/" target="_blank">RIAA's</a> own site, from which some of that Wiki entry was cut & pasted.)One of my earliest cases as an attorney in this field involved a band fighting a Russian piracy site that was selling illegal duplicates of their self-released album.  There was no way on earth they could have done anything about it without the help of the RIAA. (Ultimately, the band broke up before I could get any action going, but the point stands.)As for the 3 in question, the RIAA clearly made mistakes in the first 2, and in the third, the case was dismissed with prejudice because the RIAA didn't follow explicit court orders, not on the merits of the case itself.To you, music is about artists and performance; to me, music is about artists getting paid for their performances.Artists who don't get paid have to do things like get other jobs, which leaves less time for creative work.  They usually can't afford to tour, and if they somehow manage to do so, they risk losing their day jobs, like one of my friends who was recently fired from a local instrument store.What happened in the early days of recorded music is a damn shame, but those kinds of contracts don't generally get written anymore.  That does not mean, however, that bands don't go bust anymore.  Check out the documentary Electric Purgatory and you'll see (among other things) some fairly candid interviews with black musicians who admit they didn't really understand the nature of the contracts they signed, which resulted in lost rights or being broke when the terms of the contract were over.The usual culprits? <ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol"> A lack of understanding that an "advance" is essentially a loan from the record company- the bigger it is, the more you owe- and that it gets repaid before you see a penny of royalties...as do the professional services of all the people who bring your album to market: the producer, studio musicians, the artist who did your cover art, your accountant, etc</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">A lack of understanding that costs add up quickly at $400+/hour when you go into a recording studio and mess around for days, weeks or months because you're unprepared to record.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Unprofessional behavior on tour such as wrecking hotel rooms or bathing in Crystal or simply not showing up for gigs...</li> </ol>All of which has to be paid for, and if you're not routinely selling Platinum or at least Gold, that kind of behavior will bankrupt you.</blockquote>

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