Extremely Lame

I’ve been a fan of Richard Cheese and his band, Lounge Against the Machine, since I heard their first album in college. I heard it through a roommate and I went out and bought it. I’ve since gone out and bought all of his other ones as they’ve come out.

That said, I’m getting really really sick of his RIAA-sponsored tirades assuming that everyone out there is a music pirate. The crazy thing is that he independently releases his material and isn’t a member of the RIAA.

I do realize that all of his songs are covers, and as such, the bulk of the money he makes go directly to the record companies. The very same record companies that made the environment so toxic for independent artists in the first place. I know that, and it’s not cool. I love supporting independent artists like Jonathan Coulton, Paul and Storm, and Freezepop, and the independent stores that support them, like CD Baby, but continuing to support Richard Cheese is starting to make me feel ill.

Even as many of the record companies are finally seeing the light and releasing DRM-free, high quality downloads of songs for sale on Amazon.com. Richard Cheese seems to be going in the opposite direction:

When you receive your new CDs, we’d like to respectfully ask that you DON’T copy, share, burn, rip, upload, sideload, re-distribute, duplicate or otherwise infringe upon our copyrighted recordings and intellectual property. The unauthorized copying of songs is just plain wrong, and it really hurts Richard Cheese and makes it financially impossible for him to record his albums. To prevent music piracy, EACH INDIVIDUAL CD IS DIGITALLY SIGNED WITH A UNIQUE NON-AUDIBLE SECURITY KEY. We can now match our members to their purchased CDs, so if we find one of our songs on a filesharing system, we can trace the CD directly back to you. Copyright violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, so please don’t allow your CDs to be copied or uploaded, or we will sue you. Seriously.

On the flip side of the coin, and maybe this is because they write their own music and don’t have to deal with artist-empoverishing, soul-crushing, record companies, both Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm release their music via Creative Commons licenses, and allow people to share, use, and remix their music so long as they don’t make money off of it. Instead, they trust people enough that people will like their music and come to their shows, buy their t-shirts and CDs. Because of this, they’ve got more people exposed to their music, and more people buying their CDs. Sure, there will always be leechers, but there are a lot of people who realize that these guys aren’t swimming in diamond studded swimming pools and driving around in solid gold Humvees. Those people are buying their music. The people who are leeches are typically people who couldn’t afford to buy the CDs in the first place or large-scale piracy rings who sell bootleg copies of CDs and DVDs on a large scale. Equating all of your fans with jackasses who make money selling illegal bootlegs is a bit cruel to your fans, not to mention woefully shortsighted.