I don’t like what the RIAA is doing any more than they like what I am doing, but the anger and the outrage, for the most part, is being directed at the wrong outlets. The laws currently governing this matter give the RIAA the right to do exactly what they are doing, and there’s no real point to getting all hot and bothered at them. The debate and the activism should be more properly funneled where it has a chance of being effective – at changing the rules of the game. Until then, I’ve removed the share tag from my music directory — I value my lunch and will pick and choose the battles, in order to maximize the potential for success.

Viva La P2P!

“her [Bono] motivations seemed quite genuinely to be about securing to artists continued reward from creativity.”

Color me skeptical. Politicians dislike pissing off people and would very much like to appear to be on everyone’s side at the same time. Of course she was nice to you. But I bet she’s nicer to Rosen and Valenti. The current situation is, basically, a power struggle, and she’s definitely in the other camp.

“This was a strange day of feeling Congress sometimes somehow might work.”

Err… you know that Washington, DC is permanently submerged in a strong reality-distortion field? Thankfully the effects dissipate after a few days away from that city…

Sorry for negativity, but the congresscritters’ record on doing reasonable things lately isn’t all that good…

I am very glad to hear that the Eldred Act is making some headway on the hill. I’m sure this pleases you, Larry, to no end, as it pleases the many thousands that have lent their signature to the cause. Great news!

1. It’s the mega servers that will get pressed by legal action first or at least that’s how I’m “translating” the information transmitted publicly.
2. The odds of the recording industry actually receiving damages is highly unlikely, bc someone could space their payments out over time thus not jumpstarting the supposed “flagging sales” of the industry during our economic woes and the absolute alienation of the consumers by the industry or something like what happened to Jesse Jordan will occur where they just confiscated his saved up “lunch money” or life savings…
3. The media companies “scaring” ppl (CNN and other news coporations) own/are owned/or are closely affiliated with record labels so of course they’re attempting to cause a state of paranoia.
4. Code 431.322.12 of the Internet Privacy Act signed by Bill Clinton has certain guidelines that prohibit someone from monitoring someone and doing certain things without a warrant.(I don’t know how much actual legal clout this has…)
5. The companies can’t say “the artists suffer the most” because the companies abuse the artists and they only receive about 12% of the revenues according to a CNN.com chart(There is plenty of money to be made at concerts because if you have a good show, ppl will pay money to go, id est the 1000$ madonna and michael jackson concert tickets will always have a buyer…)
6. They can’t prove a file is a file on a PC (it might be labeled incorrectly, i suppose they could download it…but that makes them hypocrites), you can also plead the 5th amendment if they ask you to produce information that is self-incriminating (the files which are the only proof, so you can’t produce them yourself…a big fuss was made over this in the Whitewater probe pertaining to Hubbell not wanting/having to produce documents that held incriminating evidence…I don’t know…)
7. Age old argument of who is to say that you aren’t using it for yourself or archiving a personal database, and the ppl downloading aren’t downloading a double of the copy they have and own.
8. There is a flood of ppl doing it, if they prosecuted everyone, there would be a serious logjam in the court system of the U.S. This is just like putting gum in a large crack on a face of the hoover dam.
9. This will seriously disenfranchise the private recording industry and ppl will just move more towards indie music(or they’ll just cover the band and make the cover open for sharing…) These prosecutions can be assimilated to that of chopping of the head of a hydra (more will pop up in place…)
10. Not all the lobbyists are clean. If you were to search their PC’s and all the government officials’, they’d sing a diff. tune. Another valid point is what will they do not “if”, but when their very own kids get caught.