n these cases, a cartel of multinational corporations collude to abuse our judicial system, distort copyright law, and frighten ordinary working people and their children.
October 4th, 2007 — enigmafoundry | Edit

Other titles that I considered for this post were: The RIAA loses, but doesn’t realize it or Boycotting the RIAA has never made more sense, or been easier… because this post touches on all these issues. But in the end, I decided on a snippet from the excellent blog Recording Industry vs The People.

The RIAA ‘wins’ the first case that has gone to trial for illegal peer to peer file sharing. They seem to think that they’ve won a major victory. My grandmother had a saying that went ‘don’t cut off your nose to spite your face…’ As reported on ABC news:

Woman Ordered to Pay $222,000 in File-Sharing Case
Experts Say Verdict is Clear Win for RIAA, Record Labels
By ASHLEY PHILLIPS
Oct. 4, 2007

In the first lawsuit over file sharing to make it to court, a jury ordered a woman who record labels claimed illegally shared songs to pay the labels $222,000.

The lawsuit, filed by the Recording Industry Association of America, the record label lobbying organization, accused Jammie Thomas of sharing more than 1,700 songs on the now defunct peer-to-peer file sharing network Kazaa. The suit contended that Thomas violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by distributing songs for free that belonged to the record labels.

“We welcome the jury’s decision,” the RIAA said in an e-mailed statement following the decision. “The law here is clear, as are the consequences for breaking it. As with all our cases, we seek to resolve them quickly in a fair and reasonable manner.

Hey RIAA, get a clue! Do you really think Joe Sixpack believes that a $222,000 fine is “fair and reasonable”?

By the way, you have just:

1. Sued your own customer,
2. Made yourself look like a bully,
3. Made the DMCA enormously less popular,
4. Strengthened the case for copyright reform

So just like Dirty Harry said: Go ahead, make my day. The RIAA has engaged in plenty of obfuscation and smoke and mirrors of their own. That is about to end, thanks to the RIAA’s attitude towards their own customers. Thankfully, there are a great many places where you can get great music without supporting the RIAA.

Just who is the RIAA anyway? They really don’t want you to know, as they are engaging in a highly unpopular and undemocratic activity, so they obfuscate. Look at their website for the answer? Do you think you will find that information on their website? surprise surprise–you will not! But have no fear-wikipedia has unearthed the truth (again!)

As noted on wikipedia:

The RIAA lists its member labels on their website [1]. However, their website lists not only includes RIAA labels but non-RIAA labels that are distributors that report to the RIAA. The site has also not been updated since 2003 and is outdated.

So who are the real members of the RIAA? There are really four members, the others are just there for show, so the RIAA can appear to be something other than the mouthpiece and legal bully for the four large corporations that pay all the bills. Those four are:

* EMI
* Sony BMG Music Entertainment
* Universal Music Group
* Warner Music Group

And what is the RIAA doing?

As the blog Recording Industry vs The People says (and I could have hard put it better myself) people “have been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for having computers whose internet accounts were believed to have been used to access peer-to-peer file sharing. In these cases, a cartel of multinational corporations collude to abuse our judicial system, distort copyright law, and frighten ordinary working people and their children.”

Here’s a set of links to non-RIAA music, that we should all use, from the Recording Industry vs The People: