The RIAA boycott is on

Letters Re: Line'em up! RIAA to sue thousands

The call for a boycott against the music labels has struck a chord with Register readers.

Letters have poured in following the RIAA's disclosure that it planned to round up and sue thousands of our friends and children. The complaints hit on the RIAA's hubris in going after its most active and prized customers via litigation.

After all, this whole P2P explosion began the moment one decent online trading site - Napster - opened its doors. Had the labels been pouring money into technology research and development instead of developing complicated CD packaging and promoting shill artists then they might have stood a fighting chance in this war. Instead, the pigopolist mob was caught with its pants down and is now trying to play catch-up in the courts.

The summer months could be a fine time to let the RIAA know how you feel. Stand strong.

Now to the readers.

On a practical level this is futile: the genie is already out the bottle and there is so much stuff out there that the RIAA is wasting its time. I upload and distribute bootlegs all the time, I make CDs for friends for nothing other than the occasional pint of beer or couple of blank CDs. To me this is a form of protest -- I'm just not paying 16 pounds for CDs anymore.

The RIAA is going to score an own goal in loads of ways; first it's attacking it's core market of music fans. It's showing how unreasonable it can be in the most explicit way. It's going to fill up the courts chasing people who just don't have the money to pay fines. But making an enemy of its own core market has to be like commiting suicide. I don't see the RIAA as being any different from rackeering, it's demanding money with menaces, they're creating a toll road based on frightening people into paying protection money. What we need is some solidarity, mass disobedience and a willingness to go on copying and bootlegging for as long as is needed to make the RIAA bleed to death.

Kevin Hall

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You're absolutely right. It IS time for a "Consumer Boycott"!!

But let's go one step further and boycott ALL media companies so they get the message. I don't need no "steeenking" CD's, DVD's, Books or Movies!! I don't need to have my kids sued by one of the largest "criminal" organizations to date. What's "criminal you ask? The fact that these organizations exist only because of their parasitic contracts sucking the life blood out of the artists.

If only the artists themselves would see that their complacency and submissive behavior allows groups like the RIAA to exist.

If the artists just grew a set of balls and went independent, they could (at once) cut off the RIAA's air supply, get more of the money produced by their art, and open the doors to a new model of distribution that would provide even greater revenue directly to the artists. Like the commecial says, " With On Demand Publishing, Everyone Can Afford to be Published".

Honestly, we need a true "Consumers Union" that would allow Joe and Jane Everyman to finally get the respect we deserve.

If we all payed $10 a year in dues to our own union, our lobbyists would descend on Washington like horde of Mormon Crickets and displace our "competitors" financial contributions. Perhaps then we might have "Representation" in our government!

Best Regards,

Dan Paul

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Only now? I've been boycotting US music since 1999, and that was probably too late.

It boggles my mind that people can read, among other things, your articles regarding the RIAA's behavior, and cluck and wave their fingers on one hand whilst feeding the pigopolists with the other.

I'm an independent artist. I distribute music via my web site
(half-heartedly, but that's another story) and it's currently in
rotation on SomaFM, a well-known internet radio station.

Oddly, even though I am not part of the RIAA, MY music was not heard when SomaFM was forced off the air for months.

And oddly, even though I am not part of the RIAA or any record label, United States law mandates that the RIAA (in the guise, I believe, of SoundExchange) collect royalties on my behalf whenever my music is played online. Odder still, they are under no obligation to contact me or pay me the royalties they are required by law to collect. So basically, US law has codified theft of royalties from independent artists by the very people whining about how their own artists are being deprived of pay.

In order to avoid this, I have to personally waive every station that
wishes to play my music. Otherwise, my effort pays the RIAA every time one of my songs is played.

Stomach turning? Yes. Worthy of a nationwide boycott? A long, long, long time ago.

David Wiernicki

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I agree, its time for a boycott. We should wake up to our own power as consumers and let the RIAA know that we object to it ways and will not fund it by buying music form any of the corporations that feed it.

Yishay

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Unfortunately most fucking Americans are too weak to get up off their lazy asses and stop smoking pot.

You know what they need? They need a music artist to stand the fuck up and tell the RIAA to take their money and shove it, and then hold free 'benefit' concerts where everyone who goes agrees that they are in protest of the RIAA of some sorts.

Other than that, Americans are too fucking lazy. It's why the RIAA has gotten as far as it has with this bullshit.

Michael