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U.Maine Law Clinic Is First To Fight RIAA
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "'A student law clinic is about to cause a revolution' says p2pnet. For the first time in the history of the RIAA's ex parte litigation campaign against college students, a university law school's legal aid clinic has taken up the fight against the RIAA in defense of the university's students. Student attorneys at the University of Maine School of Law's Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic, under the supervision of law school prof Deirdre M. Smith, have moved to dismiss the RIAA's complaint in a Portland, Maine, case, Arista v. Does 1-27, on behalf of two University of Maine undergrads. Their recently filed reply brief (PDF) points to the US Supreme Court decision in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, and the subsequent California decision following Twombly, Interscope v. Rodriguez, which dismissed the RIAA's 'making available' complaint as mere 'conclusory,' 'boilerplate' 'speculation.'"
Arista always shows up as the bad guy. Remember, it's all the big industry shops that are suing, boycott them all!
it was a stupid idea to sue university students, especially universities with law schools.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
"still stealing music?"
Still don't know what you're talking about? Fucking RIAA executives.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Soon, I'll have stolen ALL the world's music!! No one will get so much as a treble clef without going through me!
But don't think I'm ALL bad...if you buy a C and an E, I'll toss in a G for free. Same octave only, no exchanges if you decide to change key.
Most schools with legal departments seem to have simply backed down. The RIAA still gets much of their purpose accomplished.
I give this thing twelve months before the federal government stops allowing student loans and federal aid of any and all kinds from being spent on students and services for this school.
Wow, I didn't know the RIAA posted on
I feel honored, can I have your autograph (please pay no attention to the small print)
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
You see, the RIAA could focus their efforts on developing innovative ways to market music. What if they could come up with something even more convenient and irresistible to millions of consumers than Apple's iTunes store? What if this innovative marketing brought in so much money that piracy would represent only an immaterial portion of their bottom line? They would look like heroes and every company would flock to imitate them.
But, you see, they fell into the trap of thinking that lawyers and litigation could solve their problems. They declared legal war on an entire population. Whenever there's a war, whether a legal one or a physical one, everyone knows how it begins, but nobody knows how it will end. Nazi Germany started war on the entire world, thinking they were big, mighty, and unstoppable. And what happened? In the end, there was devastating destruction throughout Europe, tens of millions of lives destroyed, and the country in the worst shape of all was Germany. Why?
You know once somehting is publically broadcast there is no controlling it. Try as you might, the public domain is the public domain!
Knowin' nothin' in life but to be legit' Don't quote me boy, cuz I ain't said shit
Slightly off-topic, but I often see people mentioning Harvard hasn't been targetted by the RIAA.
It's not for legal reasons. If you use any P2P software, Harvard IT shuts off your access; you're blocked on a DHCP level. You get three "strikes" before this happens- unless you're on wireless, in which case, you're booted right away.
Please help metamoderate.
what i wonder is if it's a conflict of interests for the RIAA to represent the record companies. they are supposed to be a union of the artists to represent the artists in negotiations with the record companies, right? i wonder if they could be disallowed from representing the companies at all on this basis.
The RIAA and the big four need to get their collective heads out of each others asses, look around, and realize that the world and market place is changing before their now shit covered eyes. If they don't find a new way to make money, they will simply cease to exist.
Market forces at work. That's all it is. If they can't figure out a way to make money on a product that can be duplicated easily, they will simply disappear.
I doubt this'll benefit anybody (and neither that it'll end well for the anti-RIAA party).
Finally some is fighting back. Hopefully they'll be the first of many. Until that point though, I agree with sethawoolley, boycott them. Always Jamendo for your music fix and hopefully Pandora will be providing a record label filter so we don't have to listen to RIAA supporting music.
On a minor note, what happened to the college funded music setups? That would've been nice to have a networked repository of music we could access at any time and just have it included with tuition and fees.
I don't care if they call it stealing or what it really is. copyright enfringment.
I'm still going to STEAL every damm song i want. And never ever buy another ANYTHING they sell.
ever.
and i will continue to help other people STEAL music.
I dont care what they say. be it that it's wrong, illegal, immoral. ect. I still havent been busted for price fixing and i dont screw the artists out of cash no matter what they claim. the music mafia still has a lock on being that immoral, illegal, and wrong.
fuck em. they can never get me back as a customer. ever. i want to see them all broke and have to get real jobs.
Finally, some justice in this world! I have been literally watching the world fall apart these days. With all the pointless lawsuits, government wiretapping, etc., I had just about lost hope in the legal system. But finally, some justice! How much should they sue for? I think we give them what they gave us: $1,000,000 per person affected by the RIAA, and an additional $9,250 for each law they broke in the process. The RIAA are getting pwned! :)
What a university provides to students is usually geographically restricted high speed access to the Internet. There's a heavy investment in wire and routing, but the university doesn't necessarily put a lot of file servers and storage in sync with that. Most often the university's own research computers are behind firewalls, and their administrative systems invariably are. Some mail services are frequently offered, but the storage amounts are generally much smaller than even free sources such as Google or Yahoo. So in that way, a university network is more similar to a common carrier's systems, like the phone company or snail mail, than is a commercial ISP's. It's designed to deliver information, not to be a static source.
Wouldn't it be interesting if, a few years down the road, all this gets thrashed out in the court system, and the legal decisions are essentially that the university systems don't enjoy any of the protections of common carrier status, but commercial ISPs do? All carriers are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Who is John Cabal?
I surmise that it is because 90% of the execs are not creative. At All. They couldn't dream up an innovative marketing idea if their professional life depended on it (it does).
It's ludicrous/tragic that people this unimaginative have managed, for so long, to persuade millions that they are essential elements of our cultural and artistic life.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
But, all I gotta say to this is, I wish I were this brave (I'm just a lowly boycotter). If you can get away with it, more power to you!
My wife wants me to steal music for her so she can figure out what to buy, (although she bought ten times more CDs than I have). I have been reluctant to help (I have static IPs at home that would be easy to trace and don't have the time to spend time keeping updated a TOR router).
Should I spend the effort to help her out?
(here's the quoted post, just to show my agreement and pull it out of the anonymous coward bins of most people:) I don't care if they call it stealing or what it really is. copyright enfringment.
I'm still going to STEAL every damm song i want. And never ever buy another ANYTHING they sell.
ever.
and i will continue to help other people STEAL music.
I dont care what they say. be it that it's wrong, illegal, immoral. ect. I still havent been busted for price fixing and i dont screw the artists out of cash no matter what they claim. the music mafia still has a lock on being that immoral, illegal, and wrong.
fuck em. they can never get me back as a customer. ever. i want to see them all broke and have to get real jobs.
As I've aged (I'm 41), my interest in contemporary music has waned to the point that I've almost completely lost interest in "modern" music.
The only stuff I listen to now is my classical collection, which I built up over a few years in my 30s.
I purchased a few high quality imported CDs from brick-and-mortar stores, and downloaded a bunch of albums and and tracks via KaZaA Lite in the 90s.
I haven't downloaded any music in at least the last three years.
Get the fuck off my lawn.
There is a world of difference between the law school and the law office.
How about we wait until we get definitive victories on appeal and in Congress?
The federal criminal code was revised to remove any doubt that an infringer could be prosecuted even when there was no financial gain.
The statues could be just as easily revised so that "making files available" to the P2P nets becomes sufficient to establish infringement as a matter of law.
Neither law enforcement nor big business understands that respect is a mutual affair. The fully expect us to respect the law, and to respect their rights under that law ... and they just can't seem to figure out why we do not. Unfortunately, they have treated us so poorly that there is no longer any respect possible from our perspective. Not until they clean up their acts and become deserving of it again.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You have your law degree. Where do you find gainful employment? The answer for most will be the private corporation or the government agency.
The employer who has his own IP to defend and is least likely to feel sympathy for the kid who lost his free movie fix after the RIAA had a word with his school.
Do law firms really have all that much IP to defend personally? Firms care about competent practice of the law. And I think it's would be a quite impressive credential indeed for a law student to take on a media cartel and win.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
Damn right. Fucking musicians should get real jobs.
Sorry, that opinion's not allowed on Slashdot.
I'll take you up on that.
{Later, on Flyer}
"New Band starting. We have the C, E, G set, the D,F,A set, and some of the flats. We're looking for a fresh new talent who specializes in B, Minors, and Sevenths. The local law firm has sponsored us with a left over "Treble" from a Treble Damages suit. We can't afford a Bass Clef, so we're using the open source version 'Atlantic Bass'.
We have purchased Octaves 3 and 4. We use Pitch Altering software when someone wants us to perform the US National Anthem. However, we're in a squabble from the owner of Octaves 2 and 5, who says our shifted notes sound exactly like theirs, and they want us to stop."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Thats a joke. The courts are not about to let college students steal copyrighted material. You people who believe in this nonsense are just making it worse for yourself.
I don't have a problem with the musicians. If the musicians were getting most of the money for an album sale, I'd buy the CD. But they don't. When you buy CDs, you're supporting the leeches that keep any but the most popular music from becoming a viable business option. I refuse to support the current system; it fosters generic, least common denominator music.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
And that is their biggest obstacle. They are protecting their bottom line and nothing else. However, if you listen to them, they consistently cry that they are trying to protect the artists, despite the fact that historically more money has been withheld or denied by record labels than by our downloading. No matter how relevant the RIAA's claims may be, a campaign built upon deceit only makes them look less deserving. A rock-solid way we can compensate the artists directly (and the labels reduced to being recording studios and nothing more) is the best outlook for the future, IMHO.
Between the falling angel and the rising ape
Yet you still want to listen to that "generic, least common denominator" music for free.
Student attorneys at the University of Maine School of Law's Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic
Oh lord. Good luck, I personally wouldn't want to be represented by a law student. Or a law professor, for that matter, most law professors I've met practiced for a very short period of time before going back to academia.
U.MAINE!
No, I actively avoid it.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Uh... it's a pretty obvious troll, given away by saying "if you couldn't get it for free, you'd be paying for it". We all know that isn't true for nearly all cases, although it may be true for some.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
You say that as if it is somehow a reasonable position to hold. It actually conveys severe cluelessness and an astounding ability to be oblivious to the whole point.
"Should I spend the effort to help her out?"
In my opinion, I don't think you should for two reasons. First, don't risk it. Yes, we'd all like for people to take a stand against the RIAA, but it's a lot easier to back when someone else is doing it. Second, they'll use those numbers to prove that anti-piracy legislation needs to be strengthened. I don't believe that mass-downloading and mass-not-purchasing can bleed the RIAA fast enough to prevent them from sinking ridiculous amounts of money into the pockets of politicians. To me, that's a no-win scenario.
I have an alternative, though. You could try a music subscription service. For $10 a month, you could get Rhapsody. You'll have instant access to all of their music. You don't get to keep it, but for less than the cost of a new CD a month you have something like 4 million songs. If you pay an extra $5 a month, they'll sync up with certain MP3 players, so you can take care of your mobile needs, too. I am a Rhapsody subscriber, so if you have questions about specifics about it, feel free to ask. I'm reluctant to say too much initially, though, for fear of being branded a Rhapsody shill. I don't know much about the other services like Napster so I cannot tell you which is the 'best'.
I think this suggestion might be a solution to both your problems. One of my main attractions to Rhapsody (besides not having gigs of MP3s to try to keep synced across all my machines....) is that I've broadened my tastes in music. That sounds like something your wife is looking for. It also proves the point to the RIAA that you actually are willing to spend money on music, but that you need their business model to be modernized. I could save a few bucks and just go download a bunch of MP3s. But I don't because I'm happy with the service I'm getting. If money's being made this way, they're more likely to be open to alternatives. But if money is being 'lost' (by lost I mean their silly definition of it... like billions of dollars evaporating into kazaa smelling vapour even though their sales are higher than the previous year's) they're more likely to fight back via lawyers. It's the carrot vs. the stick. Tempt them with the possiblity of generating revenue instead of scaring them with the threat of losing it.
But, that's just my opinion. Other suggestions would include purchases of DRM-free music that's starting to appear. Purchases towards indie labels are potentially a win, too. If indies make money and the RIAA isn't, it's hard for them to claim that losses are due to piracy as opposed to boycotting. I don't personally back this option, though, simply because I haven't been all that impressed with indie offerings. Still, though, I'm at least a year or two overdue for re-examining that option so I really don't want to state that opinion too strongly.
Cheers and have a good weekend.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
... it's a pretty obvious troll, given away by saying "if you couldn't get it for free, you'd be paying for it". We all know that isn't true for nearly all cases.... Isn't it amazing how obvious and predictable the trolls are?Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
People paid for music before.
It's a "-1, Troll" mod, not "-1, Wrong". I just brought up how instead of responding, people mod down posts they don't agree with to try to hide them.
No. The answer for most will be some sort of "law consultancy".
Only a very few will go to work directly for some corporation
and only the dregs of the class will end up in government
service.
Law is one of those college degrees where "go work for yourself"
is a very common (and commonly considered) option.
Most law students will end up working for some variety of law firm.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Spoken like someone who doesn't create. Thanks for being a leech on society.
Anyway, it's not absolutely true that people will buy that which they can't get for free, thus the AC was deliberately lying (or stupid, take your pick), thus trolling. Thus, your original indignation was kinda pointless.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I think the blog post on p2pnet gives this motion to dismiss a lot more credit than it is due. The basic crux of motion's the argument is that Bell Atlantic v. Twombly (Decision Here) raises the pleading standards for what a lawsuit must allege to a level that the RIAA's complaint, as currently written cannot meet.
The argument used does not challenge law suit on any substantive legal ground (i.e., the law underlying the complaint), but rather on procedural grounds. That basically means that the motion alleges that that RIAA/MPAA failed to meet a proper standard of proof with respect alleging enough facts to merit a suit.
I externed at a Federal Court this summer, and we saw plenty of these motions with this same argument for many different types of cases. Most of the time this procedural error was the fault of some idiot lawyer forgetting to check the validity of the case law cited in some boilerplate form complaint that the submitting firm had in their document library. The cases were usually dismissed, with leave to amend the complaint and refile one a sufficient complaint could be drafted. This is not "groundbreaking" will not stop the RIAA cold in its tracks. They will file another suit once they tweak their complaint to meat Twombly's new standard of proof.
I wish the students luck in fighting the suits against them and hope they win, but this is nothing more than a legal pothole, not the roadblock that the summary makes it out to be.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
"Rights" they gained by breaking the Constitution. Sounds like they don't truly have those rights.
Sounds a lot like a little hot dog stand in Van Nuys, CA in the 70's called Law Dogs. On Wednesdays, you could get free legal advise from the law students working there with the purchase of a hot dog. You do get what you pay for.
"Spoken like someone who doesn't create. Thanks for being a leech on society."
Actually I am a content creator whose livelihood would be destroyed by people not buying movies. I don't think suing the customer base, calling all of them thieves, making the products do less (i.e. format/time shifting), ignoring obvious markets like on-line purchases of movies, or demanding the pay for things they don't want will result in making more money. I also don't think that everybody who downloads content is automatically a lost sale. I do think that keeping people excited about the new things coming out far more beneficial to the bottom line, and this has been proven in Japan with fans of manga selling their fan-fiction. What you lose in an occasional lost purchase is made up on the next round of releases.
Thanks for speaking so clearly despite having your anus in the way.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds great to me. The music industry as it stands now and in the past. Will never get another penny from me.
They are a useless waste the world can do without. with no loss at all.
Hey music people.
Repeat after me. "Would you like fries with that?"
You're going to need that phrase sooner or later. All we have to do is NOT buy your products and you will go broke. You need us. Yet you have done nothing but piss people off for years now. Lie, cheat, steal, and sue. You're useless and dangerous. We don't need you anymore. You are obsolete. Please shut the fuck up and get out of the way already before you take anyone else down with you.
Darwin would approve.
Ah damn. I thought you were replying to me. (I had more than one window open on this thread.)
:/
I'm sorry about that. Yeesh, talk about humble pie.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Heh, that's cool :D If only all disagreements could be resolved so amicably here at slashdot.
I consider the spirit of the constitution to be paramount to avoiding a tyrannical government. When you consider not a single copyrighted item today will have its copyright expire, this is unconstitutional.
The RIAA is trying to maintain control over content distribution. That control is more important to them than the bottom line. But that control does not serve the purposes of the Copyright Act or the Constitutional authority thereto, which is to increase the public's access to content. The evil cabal controlling the mainstream media doesn't want to lose their precious monopoly for fear that the human spirit will rebel against them. But their Machiavellian approach will be their undoing. They treat people like cattle, and as a result, they'll be destroyed themselves in the end.
You are overlooking something here. Just as a really cool computer project will help grad students with CS degrees on their l33t skilz for their 'real world:I have done this shit for real' additions to their resume....same here for these law students.
:)
Ray has it right, and as usual is more eloquent than I:http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=397436&cid=21794320.
All I am asking is for you to look outside of your own perspective here for a second, and really think about this.
"The answer for most will be the private corporation or the government agency."
Yes, you are probably spot on with this. I don't discount your viewpoint, as sadly you are mostly correct. But I also feel like I had to point out the good side of this as well.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
As young as the /. crowd is, you wouldn't think they would be so jaded already!
Point is, history has many good observations about the enthusiasm of college students for a cause.
Wow, if there was some way to harness the energy of 'students campaigning a cause', then most of the world's energy problems would be solved...but it could slow down our planet's orbital velocity so we fall into the sun....Hmmm...
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Maybe they want to spend other mod points here, and would rather use a mod point then not be able to use any here.
It's ironic that you would say that considering your sig.
unfortunately part is, the courts decided exactly opposite to that same argument during a challenge to the sonny bono act (Eldred v. Ashcroft).
though i agree with you, but it's definitely an uphill battle.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
As a music lover and someone thats used the internet for about 9 years now I still see the main problem being that there still isn't anywhere decent to buy music from legally.
Sure there's iTunes, but I don't want an Ipod, and I dont want it in MP4, and I dont want their MP3's!
If I'm going to pay for digital music I want my audio in something like FLAC or APE, thats lossless, and the quality that I would get if I purchased the CD... or at the very least I'd like it in V0 MP3 so its near perfect quality.
The first person to create a legal site where I have freedom in the format I can have and stocks rock and metal music will make an absolute mint off me as I'm still yet to find such a site!
Madonna moved on from the record companies.. A very smart business woman as well as artist.
The idea is pretty young, and they haven't produced that much music, yet. I think once/if the idea catches on it would be quite a blow to the RIAA. Personally, I think it's an awesome idea and was wondering what you folks thought.
While this is a popular idea around here, I do not think it is quite that simple. The RIAA constituent companies own a very large pool of copyrights on a lot of popular (and in some cases, good) music. They do exist to serve an important purpose, finding new talent and giving them a shot at the big leagues. They are not the only gatekeeper, but definitely the largest.
In any free market economy, the various players shift positions over time as new technology changes how we perform business, consumers ask for new things, etc. In the past ten years the consumers have been asking for a new revolution that goes well beyond the CD revolution of the early 1980s: we want digital delivery, and without a lot of constraints. The RIAA companies like the cash cow they are milking, and are scared of change. However, they are the proverbial 800 pound gorilla. Saying that just because consumers want legal digital downloads and are changing the market does not mean that the cartel with a 95% market share is going to be obsolete. A decade after Linux became a viable mainstream alternative, two decades after Apple became a viable mainstream alternative, Microsoft Windows is still the most popular operating system in the world. Yet they failed to adapt, failed to deliver what consumers want. Sure, they are slowly losing ground, and people have options, but over twenty fucking years of having a better alternative and they are still dominant. Microsoft is still here, so why should I believe the RIAA is going away anytime soon?
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
I hadn't heard of Rhapsody before. I went to check it out and it seemed quite appealing. I was disappointed, however, to find out that their service is not available outside the U.S.
they make you think that they have a 95% market share- I can guarantee you that 95% of the world's musicians are not affiliated with the RIAA and i can also tell you with certainty that they don't own 95% of the music copyrights in the world (though they want to control it all). What they do have is $from back catalogs and sales of old records to advertise and distribute.
All record companies aren't stupid and old fashioned, some of them do realize that locked in exclusive contracts, cheating artists and cd sales can't get them where they want to go, but I can tell you that those record companies also don't have the $ and power to change the industry as a whole as they are still working in an industry where the big 4 have the ear of the press and the $ to tell congress what to think.
the ONLY way to get the RIAA to go down is to force them to do so economically- with major retail outlets falling over you can see that this does happen and it is happening from the bottom up it is just very slow. A decade after Linux became a viable mainstream alternative, two decades after Apple became a viable mainstream alternative, Microsoft Windows is still the most popular operating system in the world. simple reasoning: application support and price
there has always been a more malleable world to windows concerning it's application development (especially back in the day) and it has had a lot of good developers making catalogs and catalogs of software for it, this added with the fact that you can build a kick ass windows box for about a quarter to half of what you spend on a comparable mac makes the decision pretty obvious for the average consumer. So far as linux goes- linux could be really cool, but the communities really need to get off their high horse shut up about how great you think linux is and realize that web servers, internet surfing, database utilities and basic functions make for a stable useless box for a lot of us. Let us play games- let us do multimedia development- the way that apple got a number of people in the 3d world to switch over was by finally offering maya for mac- the problem for linux is that in the communities rather than saying- "we know you want office so we will give you office" they say "we know you want office so we will give you open office..... trust us it is better" and that doesn't fly in the real market world.
The way to get people to switch over will have to happen one two ways:
the linux community gives consumers what they want or
the windows community continues on their vista path and makes OS's that are so shitty and unusable that people want something that actually works
both of those scenarios, though rely heavily on bot linux and mac making a real alternative for people that were previously using windows
the only thing about the subscription service is that I can tell you for sure that it would be an extremely hard road for members of the RIAA and MPAA to gain the trust of people to actually sign up at this point because people really don't like them. I can tell you that I personally would rather take the word of anyone running a torrent tracker right now over any member of the *IAA- but I am not saying that for me that couldn't change- it would just take a big leap of faith from the industry
There can be a fine line between just moderation and censorship, but that doesn't mean I think that down-modding shouldn't take place. Not all trolls are a link to goatse, and I wouldn't want to see people stop moderating them. I don't think there's any contradiction in my opinions at all, thank you very much.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I agree. The RIAA are not protecting rights, they are protecting a business model for their members. These are two very different things. If you will review the Declaration of Independence and the early Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, the concept of rights that informs them is very different than that which underlies the RIAA's tactics. The early documents see rights as inherent in individuals, and that these individual rights must be defended against government's inevitable grasp for more power over the individual.
In contrast, the RIAA depends on a theory of rights which sees government as the grantor or creator of rights, which have no existence apart from government fiat. The intellectual property assertions held to be rights according to the RIAA have been created by the legislative process. They do not inhere in individuals nor do they proceed from any transcendent principle or universal convention, but are artificial creations of content producers, who are trying to sustain a business model.
The tactics of the RIAA are tantamount to buggy whip manufacturers lobbying Congress to make the manufacture and sale of automobiles illegal so as to protect their business model. Surely the analogy is far from perfect, but hopefully it is illustrative.
Its not that mainers want to fight the RIAA, they are just all too poor to pay.
Those willing to look to "indie" music ought to try putting "Creative Commons" MP3 download into Google.
There are far too many sites to list. I happen to find a lot of music at Dance-Industries to my taste, but somewhere in that Google list there's probably a Creative Commons site catering to almost any taste in music.
And better yet, set your Creative Commons music folder to share in some P2P program.
That is the most powerful way to torpedo the RIAA battlefleet. Well that, and of course actually creating/releasing more Creative Commons music yourself.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
While I certainly agree that simply disagreeing with a post is not a reason to mod it down, in this case the stated opinion was so obviously missing the point as to seem deliberate, and so I can see how one might consider it to be trolling. A good troll will often include some sort of foolish opinion intended to provoke a reaction.