The Tennessee Waltz, by the RIAA
p2pnet news view | RIAA News:- When the Big 4 record labels and their RIAA call the shots, they expect victims to fork out for the ammunition, said p2pnet in the disturbing story of how Tennessee isn’t merely acting as a front for Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US), their representatives are part of the proceedings when legislation initiated by the labels is formally introduced.
“And this time, Tennessee taxpayers are expected to pay through the nose to help the labels force Tennessee students into becoming good little consumers of corporate ‘product’ — to the tune of an eye-popping $9.5 million, plus $1.5 million a year and thereafter!” – said our story.
On the left is the Big 4’s Mitch ‘The Don’ Bainwol, who runs their RIAA. Beside him is the association’s latest employee, Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen.
Bainwol was included when official state photographers snapped pictures of the event for posterity.
The new Tennessee corporate law represents something RIAA and MPAA lobbyists have tried to have passed on a national scale, but haven’t so far been able to manage, notes Dan Tynan in his Culture Crash post, going on »»»
The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Richard Esquerra writes:
While the entertainment industry failed to get “hard” requirements for universities in the Higher Education Act passed by Congress earlier this year, the RIAA succeeded in Tennessee (and is pushing in other states) with this provision that gives Big Content the ability to hold universities hostage through the use of infringement notices….. Unfortunately, the entertainment industry lobby seems to be succeeding, bit-by-bit, in persuading legislators to coerce universities into buying “infringement suppression” technologies — expensive technologies that won’t stop file sharing on campus networks.
Once again, the RIAA chooses to alienate its best customers (or those who would be its best customers, if they weren’t already alienated) than change its business practices to accommodate how people obtain and share music in the 21st century. They want Uncle Sam to enforce it, and you and me to pay for it.
On the list of state and federal enforcement priorities, protecting a dying industry’s bottom line should be down around, say, making sure people in supermarkets don’t take two coupons when the sign says “please take just one.”
But over the last eight years the recording and movie industries have found friendly ears in Washington DC and state capitols, where tech naive legislators dine at the lobbyists’ trough.
Will the new administration be any different? In today’s Beltway Bailout Bonanza, where no billionaire is left behind, I’m not hopeful.
Talk about a change we need.
Stay tuned.
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p2pnet – Tennessee to foot $9.5 million RIAA bill!, November 18, 2008
Culture Crash – Death, taxes, and the RIAA, November 20, 2008
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