RIAA is ‘fighting for survival’

Letters Re: MIT says RIAA is legally challenged

We asked Reg readers for their thoughts on the RIAA's aggressive pursuit of college students, and answers have poured in. Many people out there suggest that the RIAA is moving with such incredible speed in its litigation because the organization is fighting to justify its existence before artists get wise. Imagine that.

Others take a, um, slightly more aggressive tact, saying the RIAA is part of an intricate government conspiracy. Whatever your opinion on the matter may be, the RIAA's pursuit of grandparents and children has some people concerned.

Yes we have missed something. The RIAA's (and other similar bodies)reactions are frenzied because they can see the beginning of their end. Historically the relationship between musicians and the music publishers was a mutual dependency. The artists were needed to create the music, the publishers to distribute and market it. Both were necessary to move enough product to make the process profitable. The advent of the net, CD burners, MP3's etc is that the publisher is no longer necessary to distribute the music.

Half their justification for being in the loop has effectively disappeared. Considering that they take the lions share of the sale price of a CD to cover costs and profits there is plenty of incentive for artists and music lovers to come up with an alternative solution to the marketing of music. If such a solution occurs the RIAA's last justification for being in the loop disappears. When that happens, even given their size and control over the market, their disappearance is a foregone conclusion.

Unsurprisingly they are using everything they can lay their hands on to scare the average consumer away from it. Like pigopolist organisations (e.g.the beast) their chief weapon is FUD because they no longer have anything substantial to offer.

The copyright thing is a smokescreen, piracy is a negligible threat. They're fighting for their survival.

Thanx
Jay Jorgensen

---

I would suggest that the answers are these:

Because they foresee a time when their monopoly is going to disappear and they are deeply frightened - as are all capitalist pigs when their noses are in danger of being pulled out of the trough from which they have fed for so long. They are used to using the law in order to destroy their competitors, instead of being truly competitive, and think that they can bully their customers in the same way that they can bully the smaller-fry in their industry.

If they give the universities time to protect their students then those students may be able to mount a decent defence.

This is something the capitalist pigs cannot allow because some of their targets being found not guilty would undermine the bullshit propaganda they spout about pirates destroying the livelihoods of artists. Since it is clear that the RIAA collects huge amounts in royalties which it never passes on to many artists, their lies about the damage done by pirates may be exposed in court, i.e. the damage is really done by RIAA and its member music labels who operate a cartel to the detriment of musicians all over the world.

Yes, you've missed my first point - capitalist pigs always react very badly to having the money hose cut. They will fight to the death (someone else's death, of course) to maintain the status quo.

Anthony Berrow

---

This may be paranoia, but look what happens when you put two and two and two together:

1. In the USA, building and running prisons is big, big business. Having people in jail makes money for powerful people who do things like help finance election campaigns. Putting everybody in jail who downloads one copyrighted file would be a prison operator's wet dream.

2. Universities have historically been hotbeds of dissent. Dissent is not welcome in the USA at this time, because it supports and encourages the terrorists.

3. There are terrorists lurking everywhere in America right now, and the FBI and the CIA *know* they're there, they just can't prove it, or they can't say how they can prove it because that would be a breach of security. But I'm willing to bet just about everyone with high-speed internet access has used P2P at least once. So it that law goes through, then really there's a new license to arrest just about anyone, and chances are they'll be guilty of a felony and get locked away for a long time.

Following this line of reasoning, I'd say this law has a whelk's chance in a supernova of not being passed.

God am I ever glad I live in Canada!

Tricia Lowrey ®