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7-20-03
The war between the Common Good (some would say Common Sense) and the RIAA has now begun in earnest. The past week has seen an escalation of hostilities like none before. Congressional hand puppets are angling to make sharing a single song a felony punishable by a five years in prison and a $250K fine, the RIAA has started serving subpoenas on the average of 75 a day on US file sharers and startling (yeah, right) evidence has surfaced that the aforementioned bastion of Greed and Evil paid for a trip to Taiwan and Thailand early this year on a “fact finding mission” for the Industry lap dog who is the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
Let’s go bottom to top here, starting with the Judiciary Chairman’s little jaunt to the Far East.
James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) listed the Entertainment Industry as his second largest contributor, losing out to the Insurance Industry by less than $1000. He was the driving force behind the surprise Settlement Act between the RIAA and small webcasters, which pretty much put webcasters out of business. Under HR 5469 the royalties for streaming musical content on the web were so astronomical (and MUCH higher than for broadcast radio stations) that most web stations have gone dark.
The rub here is that James seems to have wandered off to the Far East to let them know that the US (in this case the RIAA) was serious about putting a stop to file swapping. The RIAA paid for the trip in full, which is an ethics violation (as if most of this nonsense isn’t an ethics violation). According to http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/31812.html Sensenbrenner’s little junket cost $18,000, but ethics rules forbid private funding of trips to conduct Official Business (and telling the Thais that sharing songs is against US copyright law is certainly that). From experience I know this will go nowhere but the investigation may slow him down a bit.
The onslaught of subpoenas by the RIAA has swamped DC courts, displacing trivial little things like murder, rape and robbery cases. God knows copyright infringement (as redefined to allow ownership in perpetuity) should certainly supplant murder as most important to maintaining civilization as we know it.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,92351,00.html is the first mainstream news organ I’ve seen that has run a story on this but this is a good start. If average users of any political stripe start learning of this outrage they will likely start rebelling, starting (one would hope) with a boycott against the RIAA. Buy NO CDs and eventually the RIAA will either grow a brain and use file sharing as a marketing tool or they will slink away to die as the digital anachronism that they are.
Last in this triumvirate is the proposal before the House of Representatives that would make someone who shares a single file into a Felon (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-1026715.html). Sponsored by John Conyers (D-Michigan), this would change the current misdemeanor charge (on the books but seldom enforced) against file sharers into a felony, instantly turning 60,000,000 plus Americans into criminals. Putting hard-core criminals back on the street to make room for Green Day fans with computers is so obvious as to be a no-brainer…
Now to the hand puppets who sponsored this insanity ;)
Howard Berman (D-California, Entertainment Industry tops his donation list at $223K), John Conyers (D-Michigan, Entertainment Industry placed second less than $1000 behind Lawyers and Law Firms), Adam Schiff (D-California, Entertainment Industry again in as number two behind Lawyers), Marty Meehan (D-Massachusetts, who must have gotten some bad Crack because he got nada from the Entertainment Industry), Robert Wexler (D-Florida, Big Entertainment was 13th on his donation list) and Tony Weiner (D-New York with the RIAA listed as number 8).
I can only assume that some sort of pressure was exerted on the low men on the totem pole to trade their sponsorship for support for things like bridges and roads in their districts but the correlation between donation dollars and legislative action is pretty obvious.
What’s odd is that the RIAA has completely ignored studies posted this week that showed file trading actually increased CD sales (I seem to recall mentioning this opinion myself but http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/3052145.stm gives some empirical evidence) and another that did a statistical analysis that pretty much showed that the lack of new releases was the reason for the drop in sales (http://www.fairforshare.com/ari/).
Another odd, but not surprising tidbit is that, according to Saturday’s Courier Journal article dealing with the subpoenas, Verizon (who fought the good fight in resisting the RIAA’s attempts to cough up user names) has so far received 150 subpoenas for user information. Earthlink has gotten three. And the largest ISP in the land, AOL, has gotten… drum roll please… ZERO!
Does AOL suck so bad that not even low down filthy file sharers will use it? Or does the fact that AOL, with its give or take 38 million users, is actually a member of the RIAA have anything to do with it? See the last paragraph of the article at http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=3104053 for a full listing of RIAA gangsters… err… members, and then you be the judge.
It’s time to fight back, my friends. Don’t buy any CDs until the RIAA caves in and shuts up. Tell your friends the same thing. If you want to listen to new music listen to the radio.
This is small potatoes to the RIAA but many newsletters and websites across the country are sounding the same call. If we all pay attention and boycott the Music Industry they will either get a clue or go bankrupt as their membership stops paying dues due to a lack of sales. We can all do our part and if we work together we can end the madness!
Be careful out there!
Kevin Mefford, Editor
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