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White House Lauds MN RIAA Win, Analysis of Victory
cnet-declan writes "The Bush administration's copyright czar says the RIAA's $222,000 recent jury verdict against a Minnesota woman shows copyright law is 'effective' and working as planned. C|Net's coverage has comments from Chris Israel, the U.S. Coordinator for International Intellectual Property Enforcement. Israel is formerly a senior Commerce Department official appointed by President Bush in July 2005 who previously worked for Time Warner's public policy arm (Warner Bros. Records is one of the plaintiffs in the RIAA case). The site also features an interview with Rep. Rick Boucher, no fan of the RIAA, on whether Congress will change the law, an analysis of why U.S. copyright law is broken, and four reasons why the RIAA won."
God, that was funny :-).
:-)
Class.
Now, if you really want to kick the industry in the chins it's very easy, but I don't have the time for it.
(1) Register a site "BuynoCDsDay" and put SENSIBLE arguments on there why what the RIAA and the record industry in general is doing is wrong. Talk about the RIAA acting as a second police force, talk about the total absence of rational proof (i.e. lack of evidence) and talk also about alternatives (saying something is bad is easy, offering alternatives is evidence you've been thinking about it)
(2) Plan a day somewhere around Xmas where normally their sales volume is quite high and ask people not to buy a single record that day. Nil, none whatsoever, and to tell their friends as well. Give good arguments (for instance, list the consequences of what happens when the RIAA is allowed to continue abusing the law) and maybe also identify that the RIAA is a primary reason of records being so expensive (here's a question for you - it costs millions to make a movie, yet I can buy a movie DVD for the same money as an album CD, why?). Try to go as wide as possible - get people to translate the site as well because the bigger you make this, the more it will hit.
(3) Market the crap out of this site. Talk to The Register, Slashdot it (which means you'll need to keep to text and small image sizes), get it in Boing Boing, Ars Technica etc, the works. Make promos and stick them on YouTube. In other words, keep hitting it. Email the BBC about what you're doing. Get on the news, annoy your parents with it, come up with a good slogan and yell it everywhere - democracy is being able to say what you think (but without insulting people - ther'e such a thing as good manners).
However, there is ONE thing you should not do. Do not promote illegal activity. Breaking copyright is wrong, whatever your reasons are you have no right to break the law. Just send a signal to the RIAA that the game is up - and this "win" of theirs (which will surely be challenged) will make all those others accused even fight harder (except the dead ones, of course).
So there, instant revolution recipe. I'll go and take my tablets and lie down now
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Ya have to remember that many of the goodies to copyright holders were handed out by the previous Democrat administration. In better times, Republicans would take a more libertarian stance. Unfortunately, current Republicans have become reflexively "pro-business" instead of favoring free markets. However, if you expect any change when Hollywood's preferred party comes to power.... forget it.
Now... if I were a stockholder listening to these media companies outline their strategy, my first question would be... "Okay, so you're going to stop piracy. That's fine. Now how are you going to sell product?"
Somehow, it's as if the CEOs believe the lawyers' arguments that they'd actually sell $222,000 worth of product if they could stop this woman from pirating. How freaking dumb to you have to be to believe that?
Fact is, they could totally eliminate online piracy, and they'd still be unable to make money selling CD's, and the old record companies show NO skill whatsoever at selling downloads. You can't create value by making your product harder to use. They can extract a little cash, but, to paraphrase Keynes... in the long run, the record companies are all dead.