The international wing of the RIAA mafia is suing an Irish ISP to force them to place filters on their network...Will this be the next step in the US?IFPI Takes ISP to Court to Impose Music Piracy Filter
This is yet another angle in the file sharing debate. Do we really want ISP's to be the gatekeeper of all information that travels over the internet? Doesn't this go against all the principles the web was founded on?
I think this case is interesting in that the IFPI (international RIAA organization) is using the "making available" argument just as was used to bring down Napster. In a weird sense, I hope that they get some traction on this case as it brings a lot of attention to this aspect of the debate. I think this "made available" could be a dangerously slippery slope for the RIAA folks to perch upon.
Consider this scenario. An artist, who feels that the RIAA has not done enough to protect them from losses due to internet file sharing, decides to sue their (RIAA member) record label for "making available" a digital format of their work. One might consider the CDA format from the retail cd or a digital version from iTunes "making it available" for illegal filesharing. After all, the record labels are the ones responsible for the original distribution into the public realm. As I've said repeatedly before, "No one was filesharing vinyl!"
As more artists perform their own marketing and distribution duties, they will become more and more annoyed by how much the labels have been gouging them all these years. The recent internet release from Trent Reznor and NiN should really make a lot of major artists stand up and take notice. Perhaps some more major artists, like Prince, who are fed up with the industry's inability to protect their profits, may just decide to bring such a suit. It's only a matter of time....
No comments:
Post a Comment