Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2003 08:03:16 -0700
From: "J. Paul Reed" <preed@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [IP] RIAA Sues a 12-year old girl
To: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Richard Forno <rforno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On 09 Sep 2003 at 10:25:55, Dave Farber arranged the bits on my disk to say:
> >Story here:
> >http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,96797,00.html
This story ends with the quotation:
"It's not like we were doing anything illegal," said Torres. "This is a
12-year-old girl, for crying out loud."
While I totally agree that the RIAA and MPAA are going too far in their
recent effort to sue all their customers, this isn't the... best example to
illustrate why the "**AAs" actions are wrong.
Robert Cringely argued in a column almost a year ago
(http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020926.html) that to repeal
things like the DMCA (which the RIAA is using to serve their subpoenas to
the ISPs to turn Kazaa names into addresses), we *all* need to break the
law, and break it early and often. Consumers have to bring Thoreau's
age-old civil disobedience to cyberspace.
But to *be* civilly disobedient, practitioners have to know that they're
breaking the law, be willing to accept the consequences, and consciously
break it anyway. We can't "win" this fight by claiming ignorance of this
country's copyright laws (which aren't all bad; they protect us too).
Putting a bunch of people on TV that say "Uhhh... I didn't know I was
breaking the law" does not help the cause of fixing broken legislation like
the DMCA or breaking monopolies like the RIAA. It just makes all consumers
look like lawless, ignorant idiots who are trying to "steal" intellectual
property.
And that only serves the RIAA's rhetoric.
Later,
Paul
------------------------------------------------------------------------
J. Paul Reed -- 0xDF8708F8 || preed@xxxxxxxxxxx || web.sigkill.com/preed
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