Media Roundup
Submitted by supporters Mark Rosedale (law student at Suffolk), John Andrew Brewton, and Travis Mosley. — Thanks guys!
Recent News … in case you need to catch up
The big news from last week is insights into the legal strategy and the news about Radiohead testifying in the case. So far the legal strategy is not being received that well with people from all sides commenting rather negatively about the strategy. However, it seems that the press is interested in the news about Radiohead, though some disagree how much help their testimony may give to the case.
Media links:
RIAA suit gets gov’t support
Harvard Prof. praises ‘file-sharing Radiohead’
Radiohead: Filesharing good for music biz
MediaPost - Filesharer Gets High Profile Defender
Billion Dollar Charlie takes on the RIAA
Harvard P2P lawyer: file-swapping is fair use—no, really!
Charles Nesson apologises to judge in RIAA case
Radiohead supports P2P file sharing
Radiohead to Testify Against the RIAA
Copyrights and Campaigns - Ray Bilderbeck Speaks!
Two other significant events in our case have hit the wires in the case recently: 1) The DOJ chose to support the RIAA following Professor Nesson’s February 13th request for their involvement; and 2) the Free Software Foundation filed an amicus brief.
DOJ, as Ars Technica highlighted, used its filing as an opportunity to supplant the primary tenets of Professor Nesson’s argument. The substance of these claims have become commonplace in the struggle between the RIAA, the p2p networks, and file sharers. A host of blog postings have followed, such as the the works of Ars Techinca and p2pnet fueling political fodder to an important legal and cultural debate.
I absolutely love everything about this case. I love how Joel has been fighting the RIAA for 9 years over a $500 ticket, I love the moral outrage over the methods of the music industry, I love how Radiohead has the audacity to testify against the RIAA, and above all I love how Radiohead is proving the music industry wrong on every account, while getting rich off of it! It is nothing short of brilliant.
Now imagine what happens if the Pirate Bay wins the case in Sweden, and Joel wins in the US. With the Featured Artists Coalition, the record industry will be completely dumbstruck! How could this happen? They were on the aggressive everywhere! Attacking in every corner of the world! Even the google service in China is just a gateway drug into the darkest pits of the record labels! So how could they possibly find themselves so utterly defeated? Not even the artists are on their side! To me, that would be the ultimate prize, to buy me some fresh Radiohead while the industry looks like idiots, wondering what hit them. I can’t wait for this to happen.
On the flipside of things, if Joel and the Pirate Bay lose, what happens? We have a strengthened industry, but will it matter? Will any of us seriously consider ceasing our acts of piracy? No, we won’t, we always knew it was borderline illegal, and we didn’t care, because hardly anyone ever gets confronted with this stuff. And then there’s still the Coalition. This is a struggle that the music industry can not win, ever. Technological advances can never be restricted by the corporate world for long, and file sharing will simply find a new fort. And then there’s the very nifty clouds, like torrentz and Gpirate, which are doing absolutely nothing illegal, and can not even be charged with hosting the torrent-files!
There will be a day of reckoning, my friends. It is close at hand, and we stand on the right side in this battle. Whether we win or not is not even relevant, even if the music industry rolls out tanks they will not be able to keep people from listening to the music that they want to. Just remember to pay the bands that are deserving, for we are, after all, the Robin Hood of this post-broadband world, eh?
Could you help me, please?