Honestly, I don’t know if it will do a whole lot of good, but it’s worth a try.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is on a rampage, launching legal attacks against average Americans from coast to coast. After over 18,000 lawsuits and counting against P2P users, file sharing has continued to increase rapidly. Meanwhile, music fans, like 12 year-old Brianna LaHara, college student Cassi Hunt, and parent of five Cecilia Gonzalez, are being forced to pay thousands of dollars they do not have to settle RIAA-member lawsuits, and many other innocent individuals are being caught in the crossfire.
This irrational crusade is not generating a single penny for the artists that the RIAA claims to protect. The RIAA should be working to create a rational, legal means by which its customers can take advantage of file sharing technology and pay a fair price for the music they love. With artists increasingly turning against the lawsuits, momentum may be shifting in favor of a better way forward.
Copyright law shouldn’t make criminals out of more than 60 million Americans ÇƒÓ tell Congress that it’s time to stop the madness!
We have over 75,000 signatures so far - this is amazing! If we can get 100,000 signatures, we will deliver the petition to the Senate and House Commerce and Judiciary Commitees.
2 Comments
I don’t think it’s a good idea to arbitrarily sue people for thousands of dollars (by all means go after the sources, though), but surely people are already breaking the law by downloading pirated material that they haven’t paid for without the need for copyright law to make them as such? People have to be able to own and profit from their creations otherwise there’s no incentive to innovate and a capitalist economy doesn’t work.
Whichever way it gets spun, downloading music from P2P networks is illegal and people should act like they’ve been victimised if they happen to get caught doing it. I break the speed limit in my car, but I wouldn’t complain if I got caught - don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.
My problem with the RIAA isn’t so much the fact that they want to stop the illegal sharing of music files. It’s more the fact that they are getting so absurd in their statements. For instance they have said simply having a shared folder on your computer should be considered illegal. So … basically they think the internet and computer networks in general are illegal. Statements such as that are what make me want to see the RIAA stopped. They also need to be a little less zealous in their lawsuits. Suing people that don’t have computers in their house and stuff … they’re getting out of control.