Much Worse

Here we were saying that six file sharers had been subpoenaed by the RIAA – try 150:

The music industry has demanded that Verizon Communications cough up 150 names in its attempt to find those who are allegedly trading copyrighted songs.
The phone company is in the process of complying with the subpoenas – just some of those sent out by the Recording Industry Association of America in the last weeks.

“[Verizon] views the current moment as a dangerous situation,” said Sarah Deutsch, vice president and associate general counsel at Verizon, in an e-mail interview. “[Verizon’s] court battle continues, so even while complying, we continue to fight.”

EarthLink, the Internet service provider, has also been served, as have universities around the country.

Both Loyola University Chicago and DePaul University in Chicago received subpoenas from the RIAA last week. While Loyola has already sent the music trade group the names of two students, DePaul is still investigating the situation.

“We’re unable to identify those who downloaded the copyrighted music,” said Robin Florzak, a university spokeswoman.

The RIAA does not comment on its subpoenas. [NY Post]

Vile, foolish, arbitrary – feel that boycott coming:

at this moment in entertainment history, the RIAA prefers to function as a police force ready to push down doors to nail anyone copying a music file. In newspapers across the nation, they’ve printed full-page announcements of their intent to sue private file-swapping citizens.

The record industry ignored computer music technology, didn’t bother to stabilize its position in that cosmos, and is now litigating instead of building bridges to the 21st century. Coming after the industry’s long and proud history of screwing artists — notoriously in blues and rhythm and blues — out of royalties and payments and credits, it’s time that consumers sent their own full-page message back to the RIAA.

Simply do not buy any new compact discs for one year. Boycott new CD’s until July 4, 2004 … Independence Day.

I’m asking you to do this for the clean, crisp, refreshing feeling that comes when you stop contributing to repressive capitalism. It won’t necessarily change the RIAA’s bad attitude. Looking at our planet right now, the RIAA might not seem a priority. But why submit to being pushed around and played like a harmonica by corporate entities so consumed with profit margins that they actually choke their own customers over alternative technology issues?

….For one year, instead of contributing money to an industry that has loudly announced that YOU are the enemy, buy used CDs or burn copies of a friend’s CD or make cassette tapes or get CDs at your neighbor’s yard sale or turn on a radio or play your old LP records or wind up a music box or play a guitar or beat the daylights out of your congas or whistle. Utilize any of the alternative sources of music that are, at the time of this writing, still legal in America.

Remind the RIAA that it needs you. [Santa Monica Mirror]