The Register on the RIAA Attack

(Forwarded from Pho list.  Below the article is an email from a very good
constituent representative -- Gene Mosher, whose family legacy speaks to the
circumstances eloquently.  -- Seth)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: pho: RIAA nails 1,000 music-lovers in 'new Prohibition' jihad
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 15:33:18 -0700 (PDT)
From: John Parres <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/31833.html

RIAA nails 1,000 music-lovers in 'new Prohibition' jihad
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 19/07/2003 at 11:26 GMT


The Recording Industry Association of America's attack on US culture has
escalated at an alarming pace this week.

On Friday the lobby group that works on behalf of the large, mostly
foreign-owned, music conglomerates that own the music copyrights and
distribution channels confirmed that it was serving subpoenas at the rate of
75 a day on US citizens for the crime of sharing the music they love.

This signals a change of tactics for the RIAA: as now each individual file
sharer is potentially responsible for thousands of dollars in damages. Once
they were shielded by ISPs, but in the wake of the Verizon case, individuals
are now exposed to direct intimidation. The RIAA is beside itself with glee:
and boasted that a thousand music-lovers had already been busted.

The escalation in violence threatens to bring the US criminal justice system
to an impasse: although the prison industry is already full to the brim, the
RIAA's actions make new criminals out of tens of millions of ordinary US
citizens. As Boycott-RIAA's founder Bill Evans notes, "there are more
file-sharers than voters for either candidate at the last Presidential
Election".

When Evans dubs the 'Recording Incarceration Industry of America' he's only
half-joking. If the RIAA was to be indulged in its whims, the statistics
suggest that the USA would rapidly become a vast, continent-wide penal
colony. And that's hardly a beacon of liberty to shine on the rest of the
world. Particularly when, with the backing of the much-maligned US military,
the RIAA is ripping up liberal social copyright laws and replacing them with
its own. 

Not surprisingly, this has provoked a deep counter-reaction which is
finally, and belatedly, taking to the streets. On August 1 and 2,
Boycott-RIAA and affiliated groups will be holding anti-RIAA rallies across
the country. 

Well, here's your alarm call. While it may seem to be invincible, the RIAA
is desperately vulnerable: and it knows it. It's under threat of
anti-competitive lawsuits, its key DC placemen are under fierce scrutiny ...
and the mass criminalization of innocent US citizens is a most coercive step
citizens have seen since the Prohibition era. 

But can you compel your neighbor to give up lawnmowing, or weblogging, for
long enough to make a real difference? Well, read them this attack on family
values 

I cannot accept that the "Land of the Free" is accepting the nonsense
propounded by the RIAA. 

This desire to fine and litigate is becoming pervasive and foolishly assumes
that you can modify normal human behaviour with LAW. 

Firstly - all art forms are like children in that the creative urge is
similar to the urge to reproduce. If we accept this analogy then it follows
that as you do not own your children for their entire life you cannot expect
to own your art for it's entire life. In fact, if the rules currently in
force where in place in the earlier part of the last century then many films
could not have been made and much music could not have been produced. Music
belongs to us all.


... so wrote Jean Barnard. 

From: Gene Mosher 
To: [email protected] 
Subject: RIAA 

My great grandfather was born in 1870. He learned to build crystal radio
sets to listen to the earliest radio broadcasts in the 1920's. He would
invite the whole town of about 500 over to listen to them. 

My grandfather was born in 1899. He purchased one of the earliest tape
recorders to make copies of radio broadcasts for his friends in the late
1950s.


My dad was born in 1924. He had a collection of 78's that he passed around
for many years until he died last year. 

And now I am using the Internet to assemble an MP3 collection of all the
tunes on all those LPs, cassette tapes and CD's that I've been buying since
1959. 

I'll be damned in hell before I accept the notion that I and my ancestors
who love to listen to the audio arts are in any sense guilty of anything
that is illegal, wrong, evil, immoral or improper. 

Gene Mosher 

With so much at stake, I can't see how Americans can fail - except through
apathy. But can you and your neighbor make a difference? ® 

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