The RIAA is Awesome
If you spend any significant amount of time browsing around YouTube, you’ll notice a surprising number of videos consisting of people busting a move to popular music. It can be anything from a presumably inebriated couple with a camera orientation problem dancing to Prince’s “Kiss” to a solitary college student grooving in his dorm room. Whatever the context, it’s all but certain that the dancers haven’t paid the RIAA for the rights to the song.
That has led to a recent spate of cease-and-desist notices from the music trade group directed at some users of YouTube. Despite the fact that the recordings are generally of poor quality—especially where the audio is concerned—the RIAA is moving to rid the Internet of the scourge of amateur Solid Gold dancers.