Music Power: challenging the RIAA
p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- On the right are Brittany Kruger and some of her friends
They are, from left to right, Callia, Theresa, Alison, Jodi, Julie, Brittany, and Hannah.
Brittany is an RIAA victim who’s just had another extortion letter — her third — from RIAA hit lawyer Donald Kelso, a partner at Holme Roberts & Owen, the Denver law firm which boasts, “No matter how complex your problem may be, we’re listening”.
So why is she smiling?
There’s a reason.
Plummeting corporate sales
One of the things I harp on here at p2pnet is: for the first time in history, you and I can make our voices heard not only for a day, but in posts which echo down for months and years.
Because nothing disappears once it’s online. The memory of the Net is LOOOOOONG.
Remember that, Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music, for when you finally figure out it’s really, really dumb to make enemies out of the people you expect to keep you in business.
Corporate sales are now plummeting in magnitudes, a reality the labels are blaming on people who share music with each other online. But without a doubt, the abysmal Big 4 sales are down more to the fact the labels are treating their own customers like dirt.
The time is ripe
Our leaders are falling over themselves to introduce corporate dictated copyright laws which do nothing for us and everything for them — including the politicians.
Is the system now so corrupt that nothing we can do or say will change it?
Maybe. But I know something which’ll spike the RIAA guns, at least, and once and for all.
And we can do it for ourselves.
Imagine what would happen if a significant number of Big 4 RIAA victims were able to pay for adequate legal representation and expert witness testimony?
The RIAA experts aren’t worth a light and if their extortion lawyers had to deal with properly compensated, properly briefed defence attorneys, the carefully orchestrated RIAA sue ‘em all campaign would go straight down down the tubes.
Just like their sales.
How can that be achieved?
With money.
Where would the money come from?
You and I.
How could we get enough together to make it happen?
Through the Power of Music and the Power of P2P —-
—- through the power of benefit concerts, proceeds to be funelled into a yet-to-be created escrow account overseen by a yet-to-be-designated panel, and into the existing Free Software Foundation expert witness fund, and a new legal fund.
Because we’re going to organise a benefit concert in Michigan. Count on it.
And you can do the same where you live.
It doesn’t have to be huge, and you can get local indie bands and acts to contribute their time. $100 bucks here in the way of proceeds, $125 there, will soon mount up.
Imagine what it would be like if, all of a sudden, scores of RIAA victims backed by expert witnesses and lawyers began challenging dodgy RIAA testimony in depth and in detail?
Definitely stay tuned.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
April, 2009
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April 7th, 2009 at 10:39 am
It is a cool idea and I like it. Maybe, just maybe.
April 7th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Wish I had the extra dough to chip in… but you know my present story Jon..
April 7th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
You don’t have to chip anything in. Organise a benefit concert over there in Sweden. Have some fun and use the proceeds to help support a victim in Sweden, or send it to the FSF fund.
Cheers!
April 7th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Jon wrote:
“[F]or the first time in history, you and I can make our voices heard not only for a day, but in posts which echo down for months and years.”
yeah, only too bad that the MAFIAA has helpers like “Mc-Affe” that successfully prevent that the (I alleged the same) gullible massses who still support them by buying corporate CD’s can read your posts when they gullibly use McAffes “site advisor” while listening to corporate “music” and not knowing how evil “copyrightowners” are.
Why else would “Rightsowners” not want that a case that seems IMO shut and dry like the Tenenbaum one -where he “more or less” admitted in his depo to the acts they accuse him- get the publicity of having the proceedings publicised in the broadest way possible?
The gullible masses -that have no idea beside the propaganda pieces that organised press had released in the last 5 years for organised content since news outlets like yours are blocked from their view- would see how rediculous the demands from MAFIAA (in the end only for the benefit for their executives and the politico bribes and not for the creative guys the artists, lyricists, composers) are.
There is already the little error circulating that it was Joel that refused a 500 dollar offer, while it actually was the other way round that it was greedy corporate Musiclawyers that refused THAT money, wanted 10 times that ammount, and after terrorising Joel long enough so he was finaly ripe to offer those 5k at last, they had smelled blood and wanted nearly double that amount!
Now imagine those gullible masses getting the word that a few songs -that even they probably have “unlicensed” on some of their listening devices- mean all this terror by organized content against ordinary people like they them self, and not only those hardcore piracy guys that do this shit with boats and eyepatches and this stuff or those that do infringing by selling the shit they have no right to sell and what it is that the term “piracy” in legal jargon was once used for.