The Motion Picture Ass. of America together with the Recording Industry Ass. of America wants to criminalize file sharing. They are pressing the lame duck Congress to pass a bill that will mete out jail time to people making songs or movies available on the internet. That means those MP3s on your hard drive could get you up to 5 years at Club Fed, as well as civil damages.

The law would also mean that prosecutors do not have to prove willfull intention to distribute content, and could be a death blow for fair use rights.

At the center of it all is money, with the RIAA and MPAA acting as if they're being robbed. But the numbers just don't add up:

The recording industry has seen its sales and profits plummet as the popularity of peer-to-peer file swapping has risen. Compact disc sales fell from a high of $13.2 billion in 2000 to $11.2 billion in 2003, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, which put much of the blame on an exponential increase in file sharing. CD sales bounced back in early 2004, but have not reached their previous high levels, the RIAA said.

Plummet? Really? $13.2 Billion to $11.2 Billion is a drop of about 15% over three years. Considering we went through a recession starting in 2000, that hardly seems like much of a "plummet". Combine that with the dearth of creativity and it actually seems rosy.

This is the same recording industry that relies heavily on bubble-gum pop artists who no longer even sing at their own concerts. This is the same movie industry that relies heavily on remakes, never ending sequels, TV and cartoon spinoffs, and flash and trash.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out why their sales figures are down.

UPDATE: I said it before, I'll say it again: Take this as an example that they just don't get it:

The Big Easy Movie on DVD -- $5.99
The Big Easy Soundtrack on CD -- $15.99