When greedy bastards start discussing legal behavior
"What you're doing is illegal, and what we're doing is not - because we will make it legal." - That's the official hymn, slogan or whatever of the RIAA, or at least that's what I think it is. I just came accross a YouTube video and actually listened to it in the background instead of watching it... That was a first. In a nutshell, it was horrifying. When watching a plain ol' spokesperson in the form of a president of a huge "sueing you for money is our business" organization such as the RIAA, it's kind of encouraging not seeing any vampire fangs on him... But listening to him actually brings shivers down my back, really.
I came down to a conclusion that Mr. Sherman is obviously a bad man (I'll just use that attribute, since people all around the world have already used "bastard", "ballsucker", "disgusting freak" and so on...). All his thesis on anti-piracy activity rely on "internet filters", or as I would like to put it - the Internet in chains (bye bye internet neutrality). And if those don't work due to widely present simple encryption methods, we'll just spew out some specialized software that the user HAS TO INSTALL or WON'T KNOW IF IT IS INSTALLED to monitor the decrypted data and see if any downloads are illegal to use. NEWSFLASH: Spyware is illegal! People don't like being spied on! Being able to play "big brother" with any PC in the world is very, VERY dangerous. Sony tried to do that once ( click me ), but miserably failed. No lessons learned from this? Why so?
The best thing to do when fighting music piracy is to just shut the hell up. The more people listen to it, the more it is likely they will buy the artists CD, concert ticket or any other form of merchandise.
Music piracy is not stealing. (that's why it's called piracy, not "music theft") Stealing a car is stealing, because the other side does not own the car anymore, right? Stealing an audio CD is stealing, because the other side does not own the audio CD anymore, right? But what about downloading music? Both sides have their Mp3 files on their media, and both of them are pretty much satisfied. There's no theft here, only copyright infringement, and that's not theft. Period.
Here's the video, try not to barf:
Add comment July 26th, 2008