Anyone who saves this list to their hard drive has clearly stolen it from me...

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been entangled in thousands of lawsuits, ever since it decided to sue as many illegal downloaders of music as it possibly could. Never mind that this tactic has resulted in a net loss of income (lawyers are extremely expensive, they're really not discouraging people from downloading in any great numbers, and it's doubtful whether downloading had any appreciable impact on CD sales in the first place), it's also required them to advocate measures that are so ridiculously strict that they will never be enforced.

For example, it is technically illegal to rip a CD to the hard drive of your computer. No court would ever convict someone of doing this, as it would immediately trigger lawsuits against Microsoft, Apple and pretty much everyone who produces a software music player. That hasn't stopped RIAA spokesmen from claiming that this stupid law should be enforced.

The business model on which the RIAA operates, in fact, is so bizarre that no other organisation would dream of acting so oddly. To illustrate this, let's see what would happen...

If The RIAA Ran Starbucks

• Coffee could only be purchased in approved Starbucks cups.
  
• These cups would have special lids fitted, printed with "THIS COFFEE IS FOR THE EXCLUSIVE USE OF ITS PURCHASER. DO NOT LEND, GIVE AWAY OR SELL THIS COFFEE."
  
• Removing the lid would be punishable by a fine of up to £5,000.
  
• Starbucks employees would roam the streets, looking for people drinking coffee. If they found any, they would demand to see the receipt for its purchase, regardless of the coffee's vendor.
  
• Street stalls selling coffee would have to pay a fee for every cup they sold, even if the coffee's producer had nothing whatsoever to do with Starbucks. If the producer then signed up to the Starbucks Financial Redistribution Programme, they could reclaim this fee, but only if they submitted the correct paperwork. (Sounds implausible? Read up on how SoundExchange works.)
  
• Tea would be viewed with deep suspicion.
  
• Starbucks would begin a major marketing campaign against the practice of buying a large cup of coffee to share ("coffeesharing"). Starbucks executives would claim that every cup of coffee they did not sell because of this practice was, in fact, "stolen" from them. No proof would be offered that anyone actually does this on a large scale.
  
• Posters would be produced showing sad, thin African people, with the caption "Because of coffeesharing I can't make a living."
  
• Other posters would be produced with lists of coffee producers who apparently want stricter legal protection of coffee. Several of the producers on the list will have gone out of business many years previously. (Again, too ridiculous? Ahem...)
  
• Starbucks would lobby Parliament for the right to put "Coffee Enforcers" on every university campus, whose job it would be to go into students' rooms and search them for illicit coffee.
  
• Laws would be introduced that prevent anyone found to have shared a cup of coffee from ever going into a cafe again, regardless of the cafe's owner. (Obligatory link.)
  
• Anyone entering a cafe would first have to watch a compulsory two-minute advert about the evils of coffeesharing, directly comparing it to violent theft.
  
• The inevitable lower sales of coffee would be pointed to as proof that coffee is being stolen from Starbucks, and that stricter laws are required.
  
• Proposals would be floated to enforce a tax on every teaspoon sold, in order to "reimburse" Starbucks for "lost revenue".
  
• Everyone will accept all of the above measures as somehow normal...