UnNews:EMI strikes new blow against piracy, common sense, self
| We have met the enemy, and he is us | ✪ | UnNews | ✪ | Thursday, November 21, 2024, 11:31:59 (UTC) |
| EMI strikes new blow against piracy, common sense, self | 
|
16 January 2008
Gold-plated EMI HQ, EMI Plaza, EMI Street, EMIville -- In the wake of falling sales of CDs and the apparent inability of industry action groups such as RIAA to eliminate music downloading, music industry giant EMI has announced a bold new plan to reverse its recent decline in fortunes, by "eliminating" thousands of its own employees.
The music industry has been locked in mortal combat against its arch-nemesis, technologically-literate music fans, for a decade now. A bewildered senior music executive was reached for comment:
"Our middle-of-last-century business model is so far out of touch with today's fast-moving digital technology that we simply can't keep up. Our customers have told us repeatedly that they want their music to be delivered digitally, but our entire business is built solely around selling CDs so we intend to continue refusing to make it easy, convenient, or cheap to download music. Many of them even do it legally these days, and we're not allowed to punish the ones who pay our heavily marked-up online rates! How can we keep clinging to our outdated industry paradigms when the world has clearly moved on?"
The recent highly-publicised actions of the Iranian branch of RIAA have still failed to deter music pirates, who would rather get something for free in a trivially easy manner than navigate a confusing and arcane system to pay inflated prices for badly-compressed heavily-encrypted restricted-use music files.
The same senior music executive was asked about the reasoning behind the action.
"Our sinister agents have been bringing in a regular haul of music fans, whose heinous crime was to download for free what they should have been paying our outrageous tithes for. Or listening to for free on the radio or television. Or listening to for free on somebody else's legally-bought music media. These sorry souls have been punished to the full extent of the law - a statutory fine of eleventy billion dollars and three thousand years in gaol, but piracy continues regardless. Punishing the fans has had no effect so we've turned our vengeance upon a much easier target - our own employees."
Up to 40% of the company's workforce will be humanely put down in the next five months, with an additional 15% "proactive headcount reduction programme" being made up from people who will be hired especially to be euthanized. The surviving staff below junior executive level will be flogged twice daily.
Several of the artists represented by EMI have pledged their support for the employees being executed. Foremost in the stars championing the cause of the doomed workers is Robbie Williams, who has promised to go on strike and not sing if the death warrants are revoked.
Sources[edit]
- "Robbie Williams: Can he keep his mouth shut? Please?". Signs For Salads Daily, January 16, 2008