EFF: RIAA Petition

In the past year or two, the RIAA has made headlines for suing old ladies, single moms, minors (when suits against their parents were thrown out), and most recently, a very poor family who has never even owned a computer!  Recently, I was amazed at the greed exhibited by the music industry as Steve Jobs argued against their wishes to raise prices in the iTunes Music Store on more popular tracks.  Considering how popular iTunes has become and how much money it has generated – not to mention the explosion in legal online music sales it has brought about – I cannot believe music industry leaders immediately wanted to milk happy consumers. They’re almost acting like children seeing how far they can push consumers before they’ll go back to getting music illegally.  I’ve made no secret of my feelings about the RIAA and music industry in general.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a great organization that I gladly support.  Currently, they have a petition they will bring to Congress once they have 100,000 signees.  It reads:

 To The United States Congress:

We are the customers and former customers of the member labels of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). We love music and will gladly pay a fair price for it, but we are outraged by the RIAA’s tactics in suing ordinary Americans for filesharing.

We condemn the RIAA’s choice to force the family of a 12 year-old girl to forfeit $2,000 – money that could have gone to feed, clothe and educate this honor student. We stand with the retirees, parents, children and others who have been caught in the RIAA’s line of fire.

We respect reasonable copyright law, but we strongly oppose copyright enforcement that comes at the expense of privacy, due process and fair application of the law.

We urge you, as our representatives in Congress, to stop this madness.

We oppose the recording industry’s decision to attack the public, bankrupt its customers and offer false amnesty to those who would impugn themselves. We call instead for a real amnesty: the development of a legal alternative that preserves file-sharing technology while ensuring that artists are fairly compensated.

In signing this petition, we formally request that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), as representatives of the public interest, be included in any upcoming hearings regarding the proper scope of copyright enforcement in the digital age.

We sincerely thank you for your time.

technorati tags: RIAA, EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, petition, copyright, law, music, download, itunes