Submit Response is a weblog by Jack Mottram, a Great PR Coups Of Our Time
So, the RIAA has settled the first of its series of 260 lawsuits against evil money grabbing downloaders. The Defendant? Sylvia Torres, whose daughter, 12 year old Brianna Lahara, had offered over 1000 songs to downloaders on Kazaa.
That the RIAA seem to think that them being paid $2000 by the mother of a girl (not even a teenager) who had some mp3s on her computer is a good thing is a sad indictment of just how ill-thought out the campaign is, and just how venal the RIAA is. I’d make a joke about babies and candy, but it’d be somewhat obvious.
And in the time it took me to type that post, someone, somewhere, on behalf of organised gangsters, just bootlegged a few thousand copies of a major label release to sell for a few quid. But then they’re not so easy to catch, are they?
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Todd Dominey is wondering whether there’s a fund people can donate to. Although I imagine donating would get you straight on the RIAA list of folk to harrass next.
And, as noted in the Reading sidebar - the majors are using P2P networks to track the popularity of songs, so if a file is getting tons of downloads, the labels can go to the radio stations and get their airplay boosted accordingly, on the grounds that people must want to listen and then buy the track in question. Which rather goes against everything they have to say about P2P networks…
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Also, it might be my addled brain, but the second paragraph of yr post doesn’t seem to make sense: …the RIAA seem to think that them being paid $2000 by the mother of a girl… is a sad indictment?
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Sorry, yes, my grammar’s fucked. Will edit for clarity, as the letters pages say. Didn’t see yr post about the Wired article until after i posted this, but I’ve read it; interesting stuff. And yes, it pretty much contradicts everything we’ve been told about how we’re making Robbie Williams and Avril Lasagne basically homeless…
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Sheesh - can’t remember where I read this now, but lots of her downloads were kids TV theme tunes and nursery rhymes… which just ups the RIAA’s ogre factor by approx. one million per cent.
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And just to top it all off… I had a quick look at No Rock earlier, and found this: the RIAA now says that Kazaa and the like are full of kiddyporn. God, they’re idiots, aren’t they?
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Er, except Kazzaa is indeed full of paedowank. I got a full screen of paedo results earlier today in mlMac, and I wasn’t even looking for grown-up porn, I’d just hit return before getting to the 606 in kid 606. Grim as.
And from their point of view, this is a better tactic than stinging children for $2,000 - I’ll bet you Concerned Parent will now be banning little Jocasta and Sergei from using filesharing apps…
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Yeah, but the whole of the rest of t’interweb is also full of paedowank, all a few clicks away from your favourite search engine, but nobody (to borrow No Rock’s analogy) is demanding we close down Google.
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The RIAA can see its own death and is flailing in an attempt to stop the inevitable. It’s certainly buying itself time, but that’s all.
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