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The sweet smell of Rain... and the RIAA... | |
Posted Mar 24, 2004 - 15:00:31
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We just had a short downpour of rain, and the world smells so sweet...
...the birds are chirping, a cool breeze is blowing through my open balcony door, Andy (the ancient cat of mine) is pacing around my room, and I'm sitting back relaxed and quite comfortable in my favorite chair. There is a word to describe how I feel at this moment: Blissful.
It's been a while since I've felt this way... I feel recharged, I feel alive... I feel... happy.
Yeah.
Anywho, to break the blissful mood of this post (*grin*), there have been movements in the realm of electronic music and copyrights, which I think are worth taking notice on.
First off, before I get to the annoying news, I want to point out something interesting that could happen in New Zealand. Stuff.co.nz is reporting that the New Zealand Government is considering a proposal that would effectively give back the rights of fair use to it's citizens. Right now in New Zealand, if you so much as copy your CD, you're violating coptright law. Sound a little fascist? Yes, it does. Well, the current proposal would return this right to people.
Gee, you mean people could make backup copies of things they own for themselves? Who would have thought...
Anyways, it's a nice step forward for New Zealand if they do go with it. Sadly, that's the good news kidlins.
On more local shored, the Associated press is reporthing that the RIAA has started 532 new lawsuits against file swappers. Great, Pepsi and Apple can get 532 new people for their commercials... When you consider the figure that the RIAA recieves an average of $3000 per settlement (according to what they say), you have to think, "Hey, that's almost 1.6 million dollars in revenue for just this batch of lawsuits..." One almost would wonder if this is going to become their primary profit system.
I'm almost tempted to set up a filesharing server of completely public domain tunes, and just name them things like "Metallica" and "Britney Spears", to see if I can get sued. I want them to sue me.
See, what the RIAA doesn't understand is that there are people like me out there. People who view file sharing as wrong, and at one time were on their side. But then they do things like sue a lot of people for things that don't really effect their profits (let's just remember that the year of Napster was the year for the record industry's highest sales - think about THAT), and after the 12 year old girl last year? I just can't support them anymore.
I just hope that the University of Michigan doesn't release the names the RIAA wants... I want to make the RIAA's job hard, difficult, and I want them to fail. They're alienating consumers who wouldn't have been file sharing in the first place, and that's just ridiculous. If they were smart, they'd be emulating a successful service like iTunes, and leaving the college students alone.
Just my two cents.
- Traegorn
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