Musical Madness

One of the stranger parts of civil law is the notion that a corporation is considered a ‘virtual person’ with all the rights and freedoms thereof. The analogy goes even further though; apparently companies and organizations and such can become sick and even mentally ill. Otherwise how can you explain the recent actions of the RIAA, such as:

• RIAA to offer amnesty in exchange for photo ID

  The RIAA is prepared to forgive all your filthy file-sharing habits…as long as you’ll cave in to their invasive demands. Riiiight… This must be some kind of gullibility test, to try and capture the dumbest file sharers or something…

• The RIAA Is suddenly concerned about child porn

  Because, of course, downloading MP3s instantly turns you into a child molester…

• The RIAA wants to use viruses against file swappers

  Never mind that it’s illegal for anyone else to spread them…

• The RIAA hates even generic technology

  They’ll sue anyone who writes just a search engine that isn’t even music-specific. Anyone who’s small enough that they can’t fight back, anyway.

• The RIAA doesn’t much like small radio stations, either

  The government had to step in to prevent the smaller, independent internet radio stations from being squeezed offline, and there’s still a fair bit of discontent.

I do sympathize with the artists and they don’t deserve to get ripped off (though with the way things are currently set up they don’t make an awful lot off of album sales anyway), but this is getting a little heavy-handed…