RIAA penalty charges don't make it to the artists

P2P outfits Napster, Kazaa and Bolt.com all had to cough up millions to Universal Music, Warner Music and EMI to compensate artists for the illegal downloading of their music. But now managers claim that they've hardly seen a penny filter down to the artists, who are getting so frustrated that they have considered filing a few lawsuits themselves.

Record label sources responded to the accusations by saying that the big corporate bosses were still determining how best to divide the cash. In a process that could take a very long while to settle, the mathematically minded music industry boffins have decided to calculate how much every single specific artist is owed, with regard to the level of copyright infringement suffered by each.