RIAA ‘Amnesty’ Offer

If you follow the (tech) news at all, you’ve probably heard about the anticipated :RIAA: Amnesty deal.  The basic idea?  Give the RIAA a signed and notarized affidavit stating that you promise to respect their copyrights and then destroy/delete all copies of downloaded music you have.

It almost sounds reasonable on the surface, right?  Well, the :EFF: is warning against it.  So is Sen. Norm Coleman, who it seems has otherwise generally supported the RIAA’s crusade.  There must be something to it if a supporter is warning against it.

User Friendly had a great comic strip about this on Sunday.

In related news, the RIAA launched another 261 lawsuits against alleged file-sharers.  They’ve also subpoenaed more than a thousand others using the draconian :DMCA:.

Unlike a usual subpoena, which requires some underlying claim of a crime and must be signed by a judge or magistrate, under the DMCA a subpoena can be issued by a court clerk without presenting evidence of a crime being committed.

Yeah, there’s something wrong with that.

Posted Tuesday September 9, 2003 in News by Chris Curtis

This is an older entry and as such, it may be by a guest author or contain formatting problems / extraneous code. If you notice something wrong with the entry, please use the Contact page to let me know the entry title and issue.

Comments

They ran a spot on this on TechTV this morning.  The RIAA even wants a copy of your driver’s license and home address and telephone, so that “they can prove it’s you to protect you from accidentally getting sued by them.”

So you admit to (presumed) theft, and provide information that would allow any moron to track you down to your front door.

The RIAA isn’t an elected body--there is no way that they have any rights to even ask for that type of information.  And getting “amnesty” from them would then open you to any record company, recording artist, government agency, or whoever, to not only easily find you, but sue you or apply criminal penalties as well.

When will this monolith of corporate America be stopped?  No private agency in history has ever weilded as much power or authority to police civilians as the RIAA has been granted through scare tactics at the Federal government.  I mean, all they’ve done is step in front of a room of a few hundred old guys who don’t understand anything about technology, and tell them that P2P networks are the demise of the country as they are highways with billboards pointing to child pornography and terrorist weapon recipes.  Uggggh, I get so angry over this, I gotta stop yappin.

By Derek Jones on September 9, 2003 at 09:34am link

Oh, damn!  That reminded me of something I meant to include in the original posting (I’ve added it now):

User Friendly’s strip about this.

By Chris Curtis on September 9, 2003 at 10:08am link

Leave Your Comment