Cassi Hunt has recently been accused by the RIAA of being guilty of file-sharing. We all know what happens now: the RIAA will extort her for thousands of dollars (in Cassi’s case, $3750) as a “settlement” to prevent her having to go to court. Or, as Cassie puts it in her highly entertaining and witty account: ” Let us screw you over gently now, or with chains and whips in court.”

But get this. When Cassi mentions she can’t afford $3750, being an MIT student already up to her eyeballs in a lifetime’s worth of debt, the RIAA helpfully countered: So? Drop out of school so you can afford it.

We have no idea if Cassi’s guilty or not. Hell, she probably is — she’s a college student, after all. But leaving aside the martian moon man fallacy the RIAA always bases their extortionism upon — namely, that copyright infringement equals theft, and that downloaded mp3s equals lost money at the street rate of the price of the album, neither of which is true — the RIAA is suggesting that a fair punishment for a purloined Evanescence album is only to give up your dreams, aspirations, career and future. Or as Cassi put it:

The Recording Industry of America would rather see America’s youth deprived of higher education, forever marring their ability to contribute personally and financially to society — including the arts — so that they may crucify us as examples to our peers. To say nothing of wrecking our lives in the process. I finally understand what the RIAA meant when they told me “stealing music is not a victimless crime” — the victims hang for all to see.

Run Over by the RIAA, Don’t Tap the Glass [The Tech]

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