Hilary Rosen, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), will be stepping down at the end of the year. I think I speak for a large number of people when I say, WOO HOO! She has served as the CEO since 1998 and claimed personal reasons (family and whatnot) as to why she is leaving. The RIAA will “conduct a formal search for a replacement”.

I personally hope that we see a nice turnaround with this organization. Whomever takes over needs to take the RIAA in a direction where it works with technology rather than against it. Rosen went around blaming every file sharing application and cd burner for the loss in sales for the music industry. Of course out of all her years of complaining, last year was the only official downturn in music sales. I mean, it couldn't be because the state of major label bands is shit is it?. Have you turned on the radio lately? I don't even think 14 year old girls are buying this crap. Or it coudn't be that the Cd format has been on the shelf for 15 years and hasn't seen a lick of improvements in features to keep people buying. Not to mention that they still cost $13-$18 dollars to buy. At least the movie industry (MPAA) gave us DVD and upped the ante with Dolby Digital sound and extra features while pricing them to own. And The $13 price for Cds is only for NEW Pop stuff. Have you seen the price on a good old album lately. Its insane.

Hopefully things will change, we won't have to feel like criminals anymore, and we won't be treated like them either. If you love your digital lifestyle and would like to keep it open and without government involvement don't forget to visit EFF.ORG

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 22nd, 2003 at 9:52 am and is filed under Fair Use. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.