I’ll admit it… I’ve spent far too much money on music over the past few years. I’ve probably spent well over $1,000 on CD’s during the past ten years, and more than $300 on iTunes (that was back when I was still using Microsoft Windows… now I’m on ubuntu and I don’t use ITunes). I love music, and I love to constantly have a lot of it readily available.

But recently I’ve been met with insult after insult when spending my hard earned money on music and DVD’s. Normally I’m able to ignore the record label lawsuit war on its own community, but now I find myself starting to feel the heat. And I haven’t even done anything wrong!!!

Let me set this up real quick… bear with me for a few paragraphs if you don’t mind.

This started a few weeks back when I loaded a DVD of Simpons in to my Sony VAIO, Linux ubuntu powered laptop. Until this point I had never really spent much time trying to watch media from a disc on my laptop. When I need something to watch, I usually just go to YouTube or any of the other video hosting hubs. But this particular time I was itching to watch some Simpsons and I have a couple seasons that I haven’t watched in a while. So why not, right?

Once the DVD started to run, I was met with errors in my media player (Totem Player). Something about missing plugins and can’t read this or that. OK, that’s understandable right? I mean… I’m used to having to hack ubuntu to work with all of my gadgets and just about anything else, so this shouldn’t be too hard.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I found myself surfing through countless threads about what needed to be installed, what commands needed to be run, etc. I tried each and every different way of getting the codex properly installed, all to no avail. To make matters worse, installing these lines of code broke my media player so that it no longer plays mp3’s and other media formats (which, if the RIAA gets its way, will soon be illegal). Not that I really care because I have other programs to run, but WTF?

I finally gave up on Totem and a few other players, settling for the VLC player. FINALLY, something that can play a damn DVD!

You see… the good folks writing Linux ubuntu go to great lengths to avoid being sued into oblivion by corporate record labels and their consumer fighting lobby group, the RIAA. So basically, ubuntu installs do not include the ability to play MOST common media formats. What this says to me is that the RIAA ASSUMES that I am doing something illegal, when in fact all I want to do is watch the media that I PAID for!

Back to the story though.

So a few days ago I took my $50.00 Best Buy gift certificate (Christmas gift) down to the local store to grab some music and maybe a DVD or two. I figured I might be able to get a good deal on something because it was a day or two after Christmas.

Wrong. I haven’t bought a CD or DVD for some time now, so I forgot how expensive they STILL are.

I ended up walking out with Season Five of Family Guy, which cost me $32.99, and a “Ultra Elektro” compilation that cost me a whopping $18.00. I had to pay a few extra bucks to cover taxes after the gift card was used up.

On my walk home I started thinking about it… I just paid $55.00 for a CD and a Season of cartoons! Don’t get me wrong… I love Family Guy and Trance music, but the peeps creating Family Guy are in no shortage of cash these days, and the cost of a disc in bulk has to be less that 30 cents. Knowing that some big wig Hollywood types are driving expensive cars, eating expensive food, and living in gigantic houses while I use up my entire gift card for 13 episodes that have already brought on a lot of profit via regular seasons on TV is quite disconcerting to say the least.

But it is what it is. It’s life. I deal with it and move on.

I get home and pop the CD in to import all of the songs. I instantly converted them to mp3’s so I could get them on my mp3 player. All the while fealing I payed far too much for the CD, but I digress.

Then, I popped the first disc of Family Guy in. Guess what happened? The picture was all screwed up. VLC for some reason doesn’t want to play the DVD properly, so now I’m stuck with a season of Family Guy that I PAID for but can’t watch because ubuntu developers are afraid of the RIAA.

What a crock of BS.

And finally… the nail in the coffin. Apparently, the RIAA, who operates with the blessing and funding of the top corporate recording labels, now asserts that because I moved the music that I PAID for from a plastic disc to my mp3 player, I deserve to be sued and dragged through court for copyright violations.

So… from here on out I pledge to NEVER buy music again. The RIAA, a group whose sole intention is to make sure that people are paying for music, has pushed me to stop paying for music.

Over and out.