I cannot speak to the veracity of the report below, which is the source for numerous other postings on the Web. Yup, unlike a shitty band, an heinous policy decision is spread like wildfire using the new communication tools.

But I’ve seen urban legends before. And no specific individual has popped up to say he’s gotten a letter. But the end of this report gets it right…we live in a changed universe.

What if the RIAA said for EVERYBODY to put up videos of themselves on YouTube? Would we see the explosion in music sales we saw during the Napster years (yes, sales were highest when Napster was in business). Would the phenomenon make the cover of "Newsweek", as Napster did, and fuel the fire?

Once again, although technically illegal, is this new phenomenon just the thing labels need to fill their coffers? Instead of constantly looking at new technologies and saying no, maybe if they said yes, what they want would happen…they’d sell more music and get RICHER!

RIAA challenges YouTube and GoogleVideo over video distribution