Michael Greene President and CEO of the Recording Academy speech during the Grammy Awards Feb. 27, 2002

You're tuned in tonight because you're passionate about the music. You're fans of these great Artists. That very special connection between the fan and the artist is an historically important partnership—one which enriches and entertains the public, motivating and sustaining the creator.

In recent years industry consolidation combined with the unbridled advance of the Internet has created a disturbing disconnect in our relationship, and trends say that it's going to promise to get much, much worse. No question the most insidious virus in the midst of this illegal downloading of music is piracy on the Net. It goes by many names, and its apologists offer a myriad of excuses. This illegal file-sharing and ripping of music is pervasive, out of control, and it's oh-so-criminal. Many of the nominees here tonight, especially the new and less established artists are in immediate danger of being marginalized out of our business.

Ripping is stealing their livelihood one digital file at a time, leaving their music dreams haplessly snared by theft and indifference. Tonight on the television set a lot of you have seen glimpses of kids backstage working on computers throughout the evening, and are probably wondering what they're doing. Well, we asked three college-age students to spend two days with us, and download as many music files as possible from easily accessible Web sites. Please say hello to Numair, Stephanie, and Ed. Hey gang.

In a couple of days they downloaded nearly 6,000 songs. That's three kids, folks. Now multiply that by millions of students and other computer users and the problem comes into sharp focus. Songwriters, singers, musicians, labels, publishers—the entire music food chain is at risk. The RIAA estimates—now listen to this—that an astonishing 3.6-billion songs are illegally downloaded every month. This problem's not going to be solved in short order; it's going to require education, leadership from Washington, and true diligence to help our fans—that would be you—to embrace this life-or-death issue, and support our artistic community by only downloading your music from legal Web sites. That will insure that our artists reach even higher and deservedly get paid for their work. Thanks.