In case you didn’t happen to read last week’s issue of the Advance Titan (I wouldn’t blame you; neither did I), an Oshkosh student is in the process of being charged by the Recording Industry Association of America for sharing copyrighted material, which is RIAA slang for, "Somebody downloaded a bootleg version of the third ‘Lord of the Rings’ movie and several Phish Mp3’s with Kazaa and then forgot to check the ‘disable sharing with other users’ option."

So don’t be too surprised when you see FCC storm troopers barge into residence halls, firebomb the entire Radford computer lab and baton a student into a coma. That’s just the price we have to pay for stealing millions of dollars in sales from bands that we had the audacity to want to know more about.

And I for one say it’s about time. How much longer must our nation’s awful musicians and summer-blockbuster set designers be pushed around by children with high-speed connections and people too poor to actually pay for the CD or movie?

The horrible specter that is filesharing has plagued the music industry for years, and is single-handedly responsible for any and all loses incurred in the past sixty years.

Musicians make almost all of their money by tricking people into buying their albums. 90 percent of a band’s profits come from people who hear one single from an album on the radio, decide they like it, buy the album, discover that said single is the only song on the album that doesn’t make them want to vomit and are then too lazy to try and return the album.

But with filesharing, people can discover that an album sucks without having to pay for it. A travesty, I says!

And everybody knows that when you download movies, you are doing irreversible damage to the film industry. When not enough people spend $9 to see some crappy movie, that movie loses money because the movie required the equivalent of the total gross national product of Botswana to create.

And the people that get hurt the most are the technical crew: the people holding lights and microphones and stuff like that, and the people who taste Angelina Jolie’s food to test whether the caterer spit in it. Those are the people you’re hurting when you download a Harry Potter movie!

Because when you chose to not spend the $20 to buy it on DVD, those people get fired first: The people who comprise two percent of a film’s budget and actually film the movie are the first to go. Obviously they can’t just cut Jim Carey’s multi-million dollar salary; he’s the important part of the movie.

And then there is the trickle-down effect caused by rampant filesharing; there are also other industries being crippled aside than the music and movie industries. Pop icons have a lot less disposable income to spend on their most-basic wants. For example, there have been massive job losses in the ivory cigarette holder industry. And I don’t think all the stores selling albino baby seal furs and filets will ever be the same again.

This is why I applaud the Gestapo-like tactics of the RIAA. These internet usurpers must be crushed in the most ruthless way possible, whether that be under jackboot or by means of subpoenas issued to children.

And that is exactly what the RIAA has done. Among the hundreds of lawsuits filed since the inception of filesharing was one filed against a 12-year-old girl. The RIAA claims that the girl, a terrorist of the highest order, was sharing 1,000 songs on her computer.

The fact that the RIAA didn’t call for her immediate execution is a strong testament to the mercy and benevolence of the music industry. Instead, they simply sued her. And then as if they weren’t already doing her an enormous favor, the RIAA had the generosity to settle her case for a paltry $2,000.

Why, that’s a meager $2 a song! The RIAA didn’t even bother collecting compensation for all the emotional and psychological damage that this little girl had inflicted on their artists. They’re just like martyrs, except they’re still alive and they have billions of dollars.

The girl in question was on the verge of tears when she received a subpoena from the RIAA. Oh, what’s wrong little girl? Can’t take responsibility for your crimes? Upset that the legal system is benevolently going to force you to pay more money than your 12-year-old hands could ever hope to accumulate?

So you have the guts to take food out of the mouths of P. Diddy’s children, but you don’t have the guts to fess up? You make me sick little girl!

Because what’s more important? The fragile and delicate emotional development of a child, or the $20 that she was supposed to spend on an Ashlee Simpson CD instead of a Mother’s Day present? I think we all know the answer to that question.