![]()
Regular visitors to DMUSIC and Boycott-RIAA haven't seen much of me lately, and newcomers to the scene probably won't know who I am, but I get a bit reflective at year's end, and wanted to share some of my CodeWarriorZ Thoughts on several things.
First off, I started to title this piece, The Foolhardiness of the RIAA, but as I was driving home from work, the long drive on the Interstate gave me time to expand on what I wanted to say,and thus, voila, a "rant".
The RIAA is indicating that it is wanting to change its tactics from the famous Sue Your Customer, to a more gentile, or should I say, more cowardly approach, trying to enlist
internet service providers to cut their own customers off.
The bizarre nature of the RIAA's thinking in the extremely bad economy we find ourselves, is baffling. When they began suing people, by their own estimates, they were suing people that had been buying the products of their constituent company members.
When the boycott began, many said that it would have no effect. In the last five years, I think it is clear that the sales of CDs by the RIAA affiliated companies, have dropped tremendously. The RIAA was fighting online transmission of tunes, and yet, as more and more companies arose that charged for downloads of songs, it became clear that the brick and mortar model for record sales, where people went in and bought CDs, was becoming a thing of the past, and the RIAA began seeing that sales of digitally transmitted tunes was the wave of the future.
The late Jack Valenti ranted about the "dangers" of the VCR in his testimony
in 1982 (
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/31/1622232)
:
"'I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.' Jack Valenti said this in 1982 in testimony to the House of Representatives on why the VCR should be illegal. He also called the VCR an "avalanche" and a "tidal wave", and said it would make the film industry "bleed and bleed and hemorrhage". "
(Read the testimony at Crytome.org,
http://cryptome.info/0001/hrcw-hear.htm )
What really happened was that the VCR through movie rentals, allowed movies to generate a second round of income, as those who passed on seeing the film at the theaters, now could watch them in the privacy of their home. And, now, there is the phenomenon of the
"direct to video" movies, that never even get theatrical distribution, but are meant for the VCR renter.
Now, if the "sue your customer" tactic had been an outright success, do you think they would distcontinue it? NO. The RIAA is best known for two things, one, selling gold records, and two, generating negative feelings from the public by their "sue the customer" campaign.
Now, they are wanting the ISPs to do their dirty work, and incur the ire of their own customers.
In a Depression type economy, the LAST thing any business wants to do is chop off the hand that feeds them. There is no guarantee that ISPs would be the beneficiaries of a bailout, so they should tread very softly, lest they fall into the arms of the same tar baby that the RIAA did.
The RIAA is telling ISPs to alienate and piss off the folks who pay the freight for their business. Not a great idea. It would be like telling car dealers to take shotguns and shoot at anyone approaching their car lot who even looked like they might be interested in car buying.
ISPs that tried to interfere with P2P bit torrents, received a resounding slap on the wrist when they tried to mess with their customers (can you say Comcast?).
What is clear is that the content cabal , the alleged copyright owners , be they movie moguls or pretenders to song copyright ownership, will be continuing to mess with content consumers, and to try in every way possible to threaten them with whatever is the threat du jour, be it lawsuits or cutting off your broadband, or jail, or whatever.
The only analogy I can draw is the attempts to stop people from consuming substances that alter consciousness. The famous attempt to stop people from drinking whiskey, the unlucky thirteen years from 1920- 1933, so-called "Prohibition", in which sale, manufacture, and distribution of potable alcohol was banned in the United States, under the eighteenth amendment to the constitution, was a miserable failure. The so-called "Volstead Act" was even passed over President Woodrow Wilson's veto. It took another constitutional amendment (the 21st amendment) to repeal the nonsense of the 18th. The so-called "War on Drugs" has also been a dismal waste of time, manpower, and most of all, money. So, all in all, people will continue to do what they want to do, despite any and all laws to the contrary, and despite persecution and prosecution.
If people want to share movies or tunes online, they will do it. Do people "cheat on their taxes"? Sure they do. Are there serious civil and criminal penalties for it? Sure there are.
But, in the history of mankind, literally anything can be made a crime, by passing a law against it(Malum prohibitum). The Nuremburg Laws of Nazi Germany were perfect examples of
how legislation, gone mad, can make perfectly good people into criminals. We don't have to look far nowadays to find laws passed in OUR country, about this copyright nonsense, that make perfectly good people into criminals. The point of all this is that people make decisions about how likely they are to be caught, and if they believe that the likelihood that they will be caught and convicted and get punished, are very slim, often they will make the decision that it is worth doing. Certainly, all the raids worldwide, all the lawsuits , have not stopped filesharing of movies or tunes which are allegedly under the protection of the RIAA and MPAA. We probably all know several people who claim to be downloading all kinds of allegedly copyrighted media.
I do think the RIAA has realized that these lawsuits have become something of a legal tar baby. They get stuck in these things they start, and money gets burned up, and sometimes they win, sometimes they lose, and even the wins get appealed, and here we go again.
But, how about talking about positive things for a change?
At this point though, I wanted to recognize a few people for their contributions to the fight.
The first actually died in 2007. William D. Evans, Jr. started boycott-riaa, and though Bill and I had disagreements, you knew where you stood with him, and he had the courage to speak his mind, which he did. The goodbye piece written by my good friend, Tom Barger, stands as a poetic and great tribute to Bill (
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/28244).
Then, there is my friend Shmoo. I believe that on the good ship "Boycott", Shmoo often stands there on the deck, with the salty winds of turbulent news blowing in his face, and he keeps the ship headed into the wind. It takes a LOT of time, and gumption to keep this enterprise going, and I take my hat off to Shmoo. It is not an easy job, and he keeps at it with little or no rewards.
Then there is my friend Larry Feldman. Boycott and D-Music are kept alive by Larry and crew, and without Larry, there just would not be these outlets for free and frank discourse, nor for the kinds of resources for independent musicians that are provided by DMusic. Since I am half Jewish, I think it is at least half OK I use a proper Yiddish term for Larry.
Larry is a mensch (Mensch (Yiddish: ×�×¢× ×�ש mentsh, German for human being) means "a person of integrity and honor" (- from Wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensch
And then, there are the "OGs" that have hung in there with Boycott for years, who post news articles, comment on other folks new articles, and show dedication and loyalty to the cause.
Not to risk forgetting anyone, I won't name them each by name, but you know who you are.
Then, there are all the independent musicians who use DMusic, and who keep the dream alive, this dream being that one doesn't have to bend over for the RIAA to make their mark in popular music.
And last, but certainly not the least, is a man I have great respect for, my good friend,
Tom Barger. To me, Tom is the epitome of what Boycott-RIAA and DMusic is about. Tom is a man who has had a lifelong love affair with music. He has created beautiful music that entertains,
inspires, and uplifts, as well as making you tap your toe and sing along with it.
And, after all these years, he is still creating beautiful music. Just check out
his YouTube page at
http://www.youtube.com/user/tombarger .
It is NOT really the top of the mountain that's the thing. It's the climb, and we are all still out there climbing that mountain, because when you reach the top, the only direction to go is down.
In the end, the RIAA are not winners. The RIAA has never written a song, never performed before adoring fans, and will never understand the American digital consumer. They are tired
old men like Cary Sherman, shaking their legal fists and telling the young whippersnappers to
"get off my lawn". They are a dying breed, and, like Jack Valenti's silly testimony, some day they will be even more the object of derision and laughter than they are now, because history will prove beyond doubt, how wrongheaded and ultimately disastrous for the music industry, their attacks on the American public have been.
So, hats off to you Bill, for getting the ball rolling. Hats off to the multitudes of folks who have a dream they are pursing. Hats off to my friend, a lawyer and great musician in his own right, Larry Feldman (Leflaw), and hats off to my dear friend Tom Barger.
Merry Christmas to you guys, and the Happiest New Year ever. Happy Hanukah / Chanukkah ( or as they say here in Texas, happy Chaka Khan :) ).
Here's hoping we aren't all living under bridges in 2009.
God bless you all (except those not believing in God, Have a great year to those folks too).
~CodeWarriorz Thoughts
http://codewarriorz.blogspot.com/
CodeWarrior
independentm...
ShadowMom
And I learned a lot from Code. 
