- "If you help us, we just might get it [INDUCE] right, but if you don't we're going to do it [anyway]," says Orrin Hatch. That quote reminds me of the way the early settlers did business with Native Americans in the West in the late-1800s, taking their lands by force if they didn't make deals with the settlers, on their terms. It also makes me wonder what a man like W. would do, with regard to Middle East oil, if the entire Middle East voted to retaliate against US bungling of operations in Iraq, by imposing an oil embargo that could last for a decade. If I'm correct, the last embargo took place in 1973, lasting for months.
The quote also reminds me of another: If I can't have it, no one can. You can bet your ass that, if the INDUCE act or anything similar should fail, the RIAA and MPAA will play their final card, a scorched-Earth solution, outright technological genocide, begging for a law banning ALL P2P networks across the board! If they can't control P2P technology and whatever is derived from it in the future, then they'd rather have it legislated out of existence.
What they can't control, they seek to destroy. That is their mentality. They seem to think that they should be the only ones controlling the creativity of the music and movie industry. They (especially the RIAA) are all-too-willing to turn Washington, D.C. into Pyongyang, N. Korea (the Web is outlawed in N. Korea), because they are afraid that, with the Web, more artists, who would otherwise have gone to the major labels to get their music promoted, can promote their music themselves or through an independent music Web site, like DMusic.com, Ampcast.com, BeSonic.com and a very long list of others.
That is why the major labels' artist base is shrinking! Not because of file-sharing, but because the fat cats can no longer be trusted, especially when it comes to the artists' share of earnings. Better for the artists to release their material independently or through another means.
Of course, blacklisting is not beneath the RIAA, and they would no doubt resort to blackmailing radio stations and record shops who promote independent music and MP3 CDs at the expense of the major labels. The RIAA and MPAA are trying so hard to get Congress to establish a communist dictatorship for their industries within this democracy. Anyone with half a brain will declare such legislature unconstitutional, and perhaps, force them to reimburse the victims they've forced into settling for $2,000 to $3,000.
Now, after reading the P2PNet article Induce Act 2 (http://www.p2pnet.net/story/2362), it's obvious that the intention of this legislation is hardly any different from what is going on in the People's Republic of China; that is, to spy on the networks for dissidents. It is obvious with the following clause:
Section 2 sub section (2), (B): actively interfering with copyright holders' efforts to detect infringing uses...
As if to say that it's against the law to prevent the RIAA/MPAA from spying on you. Is it against the law to prevent them from violating the U.S. Constitution and your right to privacy? Does the industry really think they can do as they please, and no such law applies to them? If that's the case, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. It's only fitting that the RIAA site has been hacked more times than we can count. I imagine that the people they've hired to spy on P2P networks will be spied upon themselves and either blocked or hacked.
Unless, of course, it's already happening right now. I imagine a counterspy finding his way to the RIAA spy mainframe full of IP addresses of the people they intend to sue, and erasing it all (provided the RIAA didn't make a printout beforehand). It wouldn't take much for counterspies to counterattack the activities of the RIAA spies from the likes of OverPeer and MediaDefender, or plant moles among them, and collect as much information as possible, before disappearing, and exposing whatever levels of treachery to which the RIAA is prepared to go.
I'd bet the RIAA and/or MPAA have traitors in their midst right now, and they don't even know it. When the time is right, they will expose their many secrets and bring them down as lobbying organizations, leaving the industry fat cats to do their own dirty work without a central lobbying organization such as the RIAA.
By that time, a huge array of independent companies and music Web sites will overwhelm them, and help them on their way out of business. P2P will still be here, and a great many more artists will have the freedom to authorize their material for download, rather than allow the major record companies and the RIAA to continue to falsely claim that they're working in the best interests of the artists, when in fact they're working solely in the interests of the fat cats.
By the way, bet the farm that, sooner or later the industry will beg lawmakers to make legislation to equate opinions of raw dissent, from average Joes like myself, and leading voices against Big Music (like George Ziemann, CodeWarrior, Leflaw, Jon Newton, Lawrence Lessig, etc.), with sedition, and will be punished accordingly. Ridiculous as it may sound, it could very well happen. Look at the hell that some ordinary people and celebrities are getting for making very obvious their dissatisfaction with W. and his activities that are seemingly out of touch with reality.
Obviously, in the opinion of the RIAA, their spy tactics are working, but only because there are countless thousands of P2P users who are still oblivious to these tactics and the lawsuits that arise from them. Once more, they're oblivious to the existence of spy-blocking software, such as PeerGuardian.
I can't speak for all the P2P users, because I don't use P2P. The RIAA cartel has almost nothing of interest to me. The independent sites have truckloads of music that most people are not aware of, much of which is better than what Big Music can turn out.
I rarely visit the P2P sites, but I see that some sites have bits of information to let users know what they're in for when they try to trade an RIAA-affiliated track. I got a good look at Morpheus' resource page, and it seems that, by providing links to such sites as P2P United, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and even one that I didn't know of, Bits of Freedom, they had the same idea that I had...
...Which is to spread the word of the existence of sites promoting P2P. Of course, they ought to provide links to sites promoting independent music and news of the activities of the RIAA, sites like P2PNet.net, Boycott-RIAA.com, DownhillBattle.org and DMusic.com. The more access the P2P users and music fans have to viewpoints that are the alternative to the communist propaganda (and I might add, outright lies) the RIAA and their fat cats are spewing, along with the threats made bythe industry fat cats, the better.
Besides DMusic.com, I would imagine that there are independent artists themselves whose Web sites have links to sites advocating P2P and critical of the RIAA. I would suggest that one of these Web sites try to place a link on the front page or the news page of Yahoo and Google, since that is where most Web surfers go first.
Anything that will get the attention of those who are unaware will weaken the credibility of the RIAA further. If music fans, consumers and P2P users are not aware of the scare and smear tactics of the music cartel, they won't know, and they'll be ill-prepared and more shocked when an extortion letter from the RIAA comes, and they won't know if they have any grounds for a legitimate defense.
Which brings me to a story I read from Slyck.com, about someone who got served papers by the RIAA for sharing her folder of 592 songs. The RIAA is so determined to equate all downloading with stealing; but what if someone else was served papers for sharing just as many songs, if not more, and it turns out that not one of them came from a company connected to the RIAA? Big Music would not have a case, and in turn would be countersued, for millions if not billions.
Imagine if the many millions who use P2P knew that there was better music out there than what the RIAA tries to force-feed, and they began visiting these independent sites in droves and left Big Music behind, what would the fat cats do then, besides beg Congress to outlaw all independent music networks? Fat chance for that to happen, because arrogant and stubborn as they are, even they can't close the barn door after the horse has long-since escaped, and think they will have control of everything.
Like most P2P and anti-RIAA advocates out there are saying, either they adapt, or they die. Big Music refused to embrace the technology, and they are now suffering for it. While they attempt to put the children of Napster (the original) out of business; it is Napster's grandchildren that they should fear; faster, more sophisticated, and quite possibly better protected against the likes of the RIAA, MPAA and their spies.
I imagine that the successors to Grokster & Co. will bring to reality the late Billboard editor-in-chief Timothy White's prophecy, which appeared in the March 2003 issue of Wired. The music industry, in its present form, will cease to exist in 5 years. Their henchmen, the RIAA, in behaving like the Stasi, has maybe 4 years to live. That is the price they pay for refusing to embrace the new technology that served to reshape the industry. With 2 of the Big 5 forced to merge (making it the Big 4), and one on the verge of dissolution, the independent artists, sites and companies will overwhelm Big Music in 5 years, and the RIAA will become completely irrelevant.
Yet still, they insist that they control every aspect of the industry, and whatever they can't control, they attempt to destroy. They can't sue 10,000 people and think P2P will suffer, because there are far too many P2P users out there for them to keep track of. They can't sue a million, let alone 10 million, because everyone knows it will cost them money and decades to go through each and every piece of litigation.
Not to mention that, soon enough, they will run into someone with the resources and the guts to say "enough is enough", and they will fight back, and it will get very ugly if that person has a short fuse for the scare tactics of the RIAA.
The chickens will come home to roost. I think even the RIAA understands that they won't last very long. When someone invents spy-blocking software that can even hide itself from being detected as spy-blocking software (and therefore from the RIAA's spies), or a file-transfer method that is even more stable or spyproof than P2P (I imagine these are in the works right now), the RIAA's days are numbered.
By the way, I do believe the RIAA has yet to be taken to task for not answering to that class-action price-gouging lawsuit 2 or 3 years ago. Certainly the music industry has yet to pay a penny of whatever judgment came out of it (which, if I'm not mistaken, was on the order of around $150 million). And with prices still ridiculously high in several stores, maybe it's time for another class-action lawsuit to break the backs of the RIAA once and for all.
