It's not "their" music. It's not a middleman's music. Most artists I know personally love YouTube. They love remixing. They want everyone who would like their stuff to be able to get to it easily. They certainly want to get paid, but an unauthorized video != not buying an album. In fact it is the opposite: watching a video leads to buying an album.

This move is dumb on both the RIAA's part, and YouTube's. They added the link to buy mp3s, which I thought was brilliant. I might actually use that. But now I'm not going to go to YouTube for videos. I'm not going to bother.

Who does that benefit? I certainly didn't give more money to the artist. In fact, I probably took money away by decreased notoriety. I won't share that link or post the video to my blog.

Morally you may be right. From a legal point of view, the GEMA (the 'German RIAA') has an exclusive right to market the contracted musicians.

Those musicians gave up the right to sell their music. They can not even give their music away for free after signing up with GEMA. Though many would love to.

I guess someone has a vested interested in keeping the myth alive that you can not get paid for radio airplay without signing up.

GEMA also has a complicated system to pay out more money to music that's more 'deserving'.

You're certainly correct. But there businesses will not continue to exist if things evolve in the same pattern.