The ads are about to get started on TV, radio, and in print, and you won't be safe from the bombarding nonsense that the RIAA is drilling into your head, but will it change the way you download music? I think not.

The ads that I speak of are similar to NBC's "The More You Know" campaign that tries to tell you something by having a big star be your "best friend" and tell you that doing drugs, or having casual sex is bad, well duh! I didn't need a stoned-up movie star who is probably getting some every night with some groupie to tell me that, I have common sense just like the rest of the world, but apparently not many adults think so.

The RIAA is sponsoring a series of ads that focus on the "stealing" of music online by file-swappers pioneered by the Internet Relay Chat service and brought to the user-friendly mainstream by Napster. These ads bring into the light big recording stars and try to tell the fans that they are stealing their music, basically, downloading a song is the same is going into your nearest Tower or ZIA Record Exchange and shoplifting the CD. Yeah, I don't quite think so.

The main catch phrase that I have heard over and over in these ads, and everywhere else because of it's cliché nature is, "Walk a mile in our shoes." Okay, so where do I get a pair of $2000 shoes? Because if I had one, I still bet they wouldn't hold up for a mile.

What the RIAA doesn't realize is these ads are not a way to stop trading, they are only infuriating the public because of "The Man" trying to sympathize with the little guy, trying to be their friend, and while these ads put on a good facade for the music industry, the court battles behind the scenes still rage on where the Industry is trying to secure the names of file-swappers from ISPs, a blatant disregard for privacy.

All of this stems from the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which thinks it is protecting the intellectual property rights of consumers. What record industry officials don't know is CD sales are down because this country is in a recession, I don't spend my first ten bucks on a CD that I might like, things aren't what they used to be. I use file-swapping services to test the water, see if I like the CD enough to warrant picking it up. I admit to having bought some duds along the way because I thought they would be cool, and if I had done better research on them I would still have the $13 bucks I spent on them, but I was young, careless, and free and decided to buy, buy, buy.

Things are different now, with money meaning more, and the money that we have needing to go towards things like food, water, and electricity (you know, those things you need to live) we have less and less to spend on leisure, so if downloading a few new songs from a just-released album is what I have to do to feel better about myself, then I will download them and feel much better about myself.

I can't justify buying a CD of a one-hit wonder just so I can have one song that I like, it is true that I have purchased a number of CDs based on one single and found them to be some of the best in my collection. But this incidents account only for a fraction of the 200-plus CDs that I own and the artists that I support. Gee, you would have never thought of that when I told you I file-swapped music online. Do you want to know how many songs I downloaded, then went and purchased the entire CD? I would guess more than half. So you see, people just aren't out to "steal" music, we just want to spend our money on what we like.

What it all boils down to is I believe the RIAA is never going to win, no matter how hard they try. They can state in press releases that sales are going down, and analysts can predict that people will switch over to pay services in the next five years, but we all know that when something can be had for free, it is only a person's conscious that keeps them from downloading or "stealing," but if you don't honestly believe you are doing anything wrong, and that information and music is meant to be shared, then how can your morals, no matter how low, keep you from fulfilling what you want to do.

Running into a record store and stealing a CD is universally wrong, people know that, but logging on to KaZaa and downloading "Smack My Bitch Up" can't be wrong if you don't believe it is. It all comes from perception, and as it stands, there are now two sides, the RIAA and their money, and the file-swappers and their desire to download. Which one is right is your own perception, but just because you don't agree with the other side of the argument, doesn't mean it is wrong. Think about that...