A few weeks ago the Big 5 record companies decided it wasn't enough to place "editorials" in national magazines about talking "to your kids about the illegal practice of file swapping" in the same way parents are supposed to talk to their kids about alcohol, drugs and sex. They realized a tougher stance was needed to put customers and potential customers in their place: they sued them.

In effect, the record companies are suing their customers because said customers aren't buying enough of their crappy, over-priced product.

Can we sue the record companies if a CD we buy sucks and isn't even worth the $15 we paid? I'm pretty sure we can't.

I no longer have file-sharing software on my computers at work. I deleted them a few weeks ago when the subpoenas started flying. Mostly because I didn't want to get fired for using company computers for something illegal, but also because I rarely used Kazaa anymore except to satisfy an isolated curiosity.

The 261 people who got the subpoenas were major uploaders of music. They, for the most part, made available more than 1000 songs for others to download. In other words, they were sharing the music. I actually never did this (except for a few songs by a band I was in a long time ago--and no one really wanted to hear those songs anyway) because I didn't want to overload the company's system by having people constantly pulling mp3s from my computer.

So I have acquiesced to the record companies. I have stopped.

However, I don't get why they feel it necessary to sue customers.

This is like movie theaters suing people who go to the park for a couple hours to throw a frisbee around instead of paying to see a movie.

Or suing a restaurant customer for drinking free water instead of a coke.

Or suing someone who paints their own t-shirt to go to the baseball game instead of buying an officially licensed t-shirt at the sports store.

It's like a prostitute suing a man for lost profits because he wants to have sex with his wife.

Record companies don't see it this way. And neither do movie studios and cable companies.

I was waiting through previews and commercials (close to half an hour) to watch the movie I paid for when a movie crew guy with a scraggly beard pleaded with us to stop downloading movies off the Internet. Crew guys don't make as much money as movie stars, but they depend on movies for a living. Sometimes the crew guy wasn't employed all 12 months out of the year! And if this gets any worse, the movie studios are going to stop making so many movies, and he might be out of work!

This message was going out to people who had already paid to watch the movie. And we not only pay to watch the movie, but we paid to watch this crap, too. I wonder if the reason so many crappy movies got made was because the movie studios felt obligated to keep crew guys working--even if they knew the movie was going to suck. And, y'know, just like with CDs, we don't get to sue the studios if the movie is shitty.

On TV, I see tons and tons of commercials for extra cable services, and I already pay way too much for cable. They also run "public service announcements" shot to look like ESPN commentators talking to us about stealing cable. If those two people actually are working for ESPN, they must be interns. But that doesn't stop them from blindly accusing me (because I'm watching) of stealing cable.

I'd like to propose a deal on behalf of all of the people who are being sued by the Big 5: if they stop file-swapping, the record companies will stop charging too much for a five cent piece of plastic. If they stop file-swapping, the record companies will stop bitching and moaning about their bottom lines. If they stop file-swapping, Metallica will be lined up, shot and their bodies can be put in the Rock N' Roll hall of fame. Y'know, martyrs for the cause of being company men and millionaires sweating about not making enough money.

Matt Worley is contemplating a class-action lawsuit against God because sometimes life isn't fair.