The RIAA and some of the top recording labels are in the news again, this time going against a lady who allegedly downloaded and share more than 1,700 songs.

The Recording Industry Association of America says she is, making her liable for perhaps millions of dollars in damages in the first RIAA copyright case to go to trial.

millions of dollars in damages. OK, now this is where I really start to get pissed off. Anyone familiar with Hannah Montana? I know those of you in the US with young daughters know who I am talking about. Anyways, she is the top, and when I say top, I mean the big dog this year for young children who not only love her TV show, but love her music. It is hard for me to love her music, when her father is the one who paraded himself on TV with a nasty mullet singing “Don’t break my heart, my achy, breaky heart.” OK, well this year she is doing her big US tour and every kid that I know of wants to see this concert. In the past, when a hot children’s star came to town, it was easy to get tickets and take the kids to the show. Well not any more.

Ticket brokers have purchased all of the tickets for her venues and are selling them for insane amounts of money. For instance, you can get nose bleed seats on eBay, 4 of them, for about $900. You want the good seats, so you can actually make out Hannah and see her, well you will drop around $1,000 per ticket. So, my question is this. If the RIAA is protecting the music companies, who is protecting us? Absolutely nobody! The great thing is this, when she comes to Chicago, she isn’t going to have many fans there, which I think is awesome. On a local radio station yesterday, parents were uniting to picket her concert. Does Hannah really care though? I mean it is a sold out show, sold out to the brokers that is.

This whole music thing is getting ridiculous. Artists aren’t making their money on albums sold, they are making it with their concerts and their merchandise. A CD to an artist is nothing more than a marketing gimmick to get money flowing into the record label, and producing a spark in consumers who will go to their shows. HERE is a decent write up on how royalty fees are distributed to the artist.

I enjoy listening to music and I used to enjoy purchasing it, but I will not any longer. I will listen to what I have in my arsenal now, and listen to whatever is on the radio. I will not purchase another album, and I have no plans on downloading music either. Actually, I take that back. I will purchase Sammy Hagar albums because he isn’t all about the money. I have been to a couple of his FREE, yes FREE, concerts that he puts on every now and then, I have been down to the Cabo Wabo and watched him play for FREE. I can’t sit here any more watching the music industry go after people who they think are screwing them, while ticket brokers get off free for screwing over the fans. If the music industry really cared, they would go after the people who are really screwing them, and stop putting on acts such as Brittney Spears, the female Milli Vanilli.

Comcast, what can I say about them? Well, for the past three weeks, I can’t say anything good about them. If you are on IRC and in a channel that I am in, then you probably already know about my connection issues for the past 3 weeks. Then today, I woke up, went to go online, and boom, connection issues again.

So I go to the Comcast.net website to see about any issues in the area. When I go to connect, I was greeted with a web page that said I needed to update my browser. My browser is Konqueror, part of the KDE 3.5.7 desktop, and labeled one of the most compliant web browsers there are. So I read the page and it tells me to take a look at the possible options:

Well this infuriated me a bit. So now I decided to call Comcast once again about my connection issue.

The lady on the phone was very nice, which I guess they need to be since everyone calling them tends to be fairly pissed off, and it is hard getting upset with the person on the other end, even though it isn’t their fault. So one good move by Comcast, maybe the only one. She goes to connect to my modem to check for problems. She tells me she sees no problems with the modem and then proceeds to tell me they do have an outage in the area and that due to this she cannot dispatch a technician.

So she goes on to tell me my options and that as it stands, since this was my first call this week, my problem cannot be escalated for support. She said I have to have at least 3 more issues recorded within the week since it is an intermittent connection issue in order for them to a) dispatch a technician, and b) escalate the issue.

OK, 3 more times, 1 down, 2 to go. So as soon as I hang up, I call right back for #2. I get a guy on the phone this time who seems to enjoy chewing his gum more so than talking to me. Well he goes through the same spiel, and tells me the same 3 strikeout rule, and I tell him that this is my 2nd call and I give him the reference number that was given to me. He says he is running a line and modem test and doesn’t see any problems and goes on to say that it is my network in the house possibly. He asks me, “what are the lights on your modem doing?” I simply answered “nothing, my modem is not even powered on, there is not 1 cable going into it.” He goes silent for a second to come up with a lie, since I just busted him. How could my modem be fine from his end, when it isn’t even turned on, and the closest cable to it is about 5 feet away?

Well, in the end, the 2nd call didn’t count because it was for the same issue. So, as I promised Comcast, I would blog about how horrible they are and hopefully try to keep people from choosing them. I have been warned of possible legal issues by their proper people, but do I really care? Sue me! All I have are a couple of text books for school, a few pens, 4 folders, and a notepad.

So, if you are in the United States of America and are looking for a broadband Internet provider, don’t choose Comcast. I told them I would rather have AT&T and big brother spying on my connection then no connection at all. I think I am starting to notice a pattern around here, didn’t someone else just blog recently about how horrible Comcast was?

Update: What are the chances? I did not even get to finish writing this and the dog is going nuts. So I go to see what his issue is, and boom, the Comcast guy is in the backyard! He just told me that there is a “noise” issue somewhere in our node and he is going box-to-box to locate it. He said he will get it fixed, and for once, I kind of felt good, but still, Comcast is bad! Man, this instance, or coincidence kind of kills this whole post now, but we shall see how it goes. At least the guy who is out here sounds like he knows what he is doing.