Fletcher (Jim Carrey): "You scratched my car."
Attendant: "Where?"
Fletcher: "Right......there."
Attendant: "Oh that. That was already there."
Fletcher: "Why you.......you LIAR! You know what I'm going to do about this?"
Attendant: "What?"
Fletcher: "Nothing. Because if I take you to small claims court it'll just drain eight hours out of my life and you probably won't show up and if I finally got the judgement you'd just stiff me anyway. So what I'm GONNA DO is piss and moan like an impotent jerk and then bend over and take it up the tailpipe!"
Attendant: "You've been here before haven't you?"

In much the same way, web sites like Boycott-RIAA.com, Fatchucks.com, UKCDR.org and dozens of others have been talking about how wrong the music and film industries are. Yet, we and the public still "take it up the tailpipe" just like Fletcher did.

Where are the creative protests, the fun, the humor and the mad resistance of geeks, stoners, conservatives, musicians and Jane Public?

Major label sales are slumping and making news, but new copy-protected CDs keep coming out every day. The MPAA is roundly criticized for abusive moves, but the DMCA is still around after five years.

With all due respect, it's time to shit or get off the pot. We've bitched, moaned and whined over the MPAA's/RIAA's fight with the public, but now I'm asking for your help. Using all four elements:

* Fun
* Humorous
* Easy to do
* Easy to organize

I'm asking you to share any ideas you have for making it easy for the public - the geeks, the stoners and the others - to begin restoring consumer rights while repeatedly laughing, having fun and working together. Please share your ideas here and we'll be glad to help out.

Peace, Chuck (aka FatChuck)

as in chuck d? but any way i say we march on DC or take every riaa CD we can get are dirty hands on and burn them in the streets

i think that people should spred the word as mush as possible. if the news companys refuse to put the info out to the people you should. start anti riaa emails and spred them. make fliers and put them on cars at your school the mall and so on. lets be proactive.

we need to organize a cd burning event outside the RIAA office in DC oh btw every one make sure you CALL THE RIAA their phone number is 202-775-0101 let them know how you fell about them.

202-775-0101 Spread Word about the Boycott to the Machine itself (remember it might be long distance.)

I think we should stick the used cds shinny side up on the Washington Monument as a reminder of the shafting the American public has been taking from these greedy bastards, er I mean the RIAA.

RIAA VOODOO DOLLS. I don't know if we could find anyone willing to create such hideous likenesses though, or if it would even be humanly possible to construct such putrid ugliness.

The only people still taking it up the tailpipes are the ones still buying the industry puke.

And apparently that number is decreasing. But I agree we need to do some physical protesting. It is far too easy for us to be ignored by them if all we doo is exchange information online.

I think the biggest key is getting the information out to the general public and that means media. there is a poster campaign going on at downhillbattle.org I've heard of indie band concerts against the RIAA being orginized (from this forum) and someone suggested on this site in response to another story to take out classified ads or small display ads in the local papers around the country (which I'm going to work on) giveing the BoycottRIAA.com address and some other. But we have to find a way to break into the mainstream media with our message. That's what's hard

thats what the burning of CDs in the street would get you media will lisson to the dumb the ignorent and the down right insane and i would like to think a bomb fire of riaa Cds would be a mix of off that plus a few other things ;0)

chuck - "with all due respect", I don't know you from adam (but wonder if maybe you are related to fatchuck?), this little thing of ours is doing really well (my opinion) without leaders or organization (per se).

You may call it whining, but sales *are* down, mpaa & riaa are increasingly on the offensive (we already knew they *were* offensive...)

My opinion is keep it all as lose and disorganized as possible - then it is more unpredictable as well as harder to break or infiltrate or counter.

I gotta agree with compmore, tho' the key is breaking the news to Q Public. Calling all the media outlets you can when a newsitem breaks is a start. That may be futile (if we've given up on the media as owned by them), and it takes some amount of co-ordination, but maybe if we can organize a phone tree system or something like that???


Grassroots actions like concerts would get get major media attention especially if we get some big name appearring. Otherwise, I'm doubtful they'll carry our POV.

'Guerilla'/media virus tactics are more likely to be up to our speed. Pick a few forums or blogs of like mind to you & spread the word as newsitems break. (This is surprisingly effective at getting the word to spread, imo, especially when you have rss feeds and the like to further spread the news.) If you've got a blog or forum, even if it is supposedly dedicated to something else instead, drop some news items in.

Again, compmore's poster campaigns, the concerts etc - all good ideas. I think burning a large number of CDs may be hazardous folks. Adhering CDs to the RIAA HQ (etc) may be a good idea, especially if you could do it as a "smart mob" (everybody plot on a time to show up with a used CD & some ticky-tack, then split).

The main thing in my mind is to carry the msg to people who aren't here already...

Yeah. I think we need to not burn cd. I know that every time I see somebody burning something in protest I just think "nutcase" and move on.

I think protesting in the traditional sense is somewhat played out. Chuck makes a couple of good points, namely 'fun' and 'humor'.

Something like this (or hopefully smarter). Arrange to have 10 tons of cow shit delivered to RIAA headquarters. Bribe the drivers to dump it right in front of the door. Send a note with it:
"You've been delivering shit to us for years. We thought we'd return the favor."
I would laugh at that.

koemoejoe, you forget that when you burn cds in the streets of DC, the citizens living in DC get to foot the bill for cleaning up the mess. as a DC resident, i think i pay enough taxes as is already. i respectfully suggest you keep yourself to the other "burning" of cds. or do it in your own backyard.

i think more people should link to indie rocklabels and indie CD stores from their websites.

plus we could all burn a copy of our favorite cds and send it to your congressman, (preferably by the truckloads) telling him that you're not pirating the record industry, but that the record industry actually should pay you for advertising you're doing for them.

note when I say "of like mind" I'm meaning other forums etc that you frequent, not other anti-riaa sites (that is just preaching to the converted)

There's an idea...

Everyone burn a cd of their favorite indie music - or of artists who support filesharing. Put each cd in a case, just like you get it at the store. Send the cds to a single congressman (perhaps Senator Coleman?) and show him how much music is legally tradable.
The reasoning is this - if you watched the hearings, the RIAA ceo brought a big stack of cds representing the "losses" they incurred by having one person trade 1000 songs. (Stupidly assuming that that person would have gone out and bought all those cds ofcourse, but I digress). In return, we need to show the congressman that there is just as much material to be traded legally. That way, we emphasize the point that filesharing is not inherently bad or illegal, but that the RIAA is simply hellbent on controlling the distribution of music.

I see the large demonstrations that Truth does against the tobacco industry... why not follow suit?

Let's see, the voodoo doll has been done (www.webcasteralliance.com); burning stuff is messy; concerts are good.

Chuck is fatchuck, for those who aren't sure. I don't think he's trying to "lead" anything as much as he's looking for an idea that both we and the media may be able to sink our teeth into.

We need a commercial with a giant monkey. Or a horde of chimps wearing lab coats on an assembly line. CDs are coming down the line, some with major label logos and some with a boycott logo (or "Indie" or both). The chimps throw the major label CDs into a wood chipper and allow the boycott CDs to pass, with the tag line, "It doesn't take a genius to tell the difference."

Nice job wybenga,
I saw a truth campaign ad on the tube last night. It was one of the crazyworld series. If we could produce a similar ad or series, and get them on stations as a paid public service ad, on cable or the major nets, have them downloadable on the web site, etc. That would make a huge impact.

No for the organization part. schmoo and others are band members. They could lend advise, expertise, and equipment to do the sound portion of our commercial. Who in the audience has film or video production experience? We would need others with some editing and post production skills as well. Someone would need to write a script or gather ideas.

Is anyone up to the challenge of making this thing? It would go a long way towards making the case against the RIAA more public.

I don't have real world skills as such, but I have a DV cam, and a computer with a DVD burner. Anyone else willing to put some work and effort into this?

I know two guys in small film directing/production

if you guys can get together the people and resources, they'll make you your video

OK. a lot of people have to do the same thing at the same time. Example: if a whole bunch of people call the RIAA, or one of the Record Label phone numbers AT THE SAME TIME, bam their phones die. None of the services that are used today are designed for such usage. Think what would happen if thousands of people all turned on AC units, or picked up the phone at the same time. Do stuff like this, the media gets wind of it, and here we go. Now WE have their attention.

jewelbox, wouldn't that be the equilvilent of a DOS (denial of service) attack? Those are felonies under new anti terrorist laws like the patriot act. Anything we did to get attention would have to be legal, cause no harm, not be biased, and be backed by factual provable in court tangible evidence.

i agree with koemoejoe #1 comment, we need to gather tons of people from everywhere out front of either a government building or an riaa building, and make a huge bon fire of riaa cd's that everyone hates, ofcourse we could destroy them cuz we all probably made backup copies like any smart person would do.

so make the biggest bon fire ever, right outfront of their biulding!! i support it!

a friend of mine did this one time, he just grabbed a chair, brought it into the cd store, stood right up on it, and protested to everyone, something like "do not buy from these bastards"! "they steal and take your dignities away!" and kept protesting like that till he got kicked out, and was told by a police official, that if he were to set foot in here again, he would be put in jail for like 1-3 years. i cant remember the charge, but isnt this bull shit?

well after he saw everyone that was in that cd store, i mean the store was packed, and geuss what? everyone that was in there walked out empty handed, and on the way out a couple guys high fived my friend.

i mean, just go into places, like cd stores, and walk up to someone who wants to buy the cd and be like, whispering to him/her, do not buy from these guys, they are a rip off, anything that has to do with the riaa is rip off, i bet you could goto colombia house and pay half the price at the most! and hand him/her a pamplet of how bad the riaa is and their scemes.

maddawg15, do you have a pamplet? If so would you post it so we could hand it out as well? Anything we can get would be great.

I think literally burning RIAA CDs would do nothing but make them laugh. Their thinking: good another new CD will be sold because there isn't a used one to buy for half price or less. I don't think that is going to get any point to these idiots. In fact its our hard earned money going down the tubes on that one and it isn't costing the RIAA a penny. I like the protests at the retail level better because it makes us more visible without looking like the fanatics of the 60s burning rock records for religious and moral reasons.

i wish

that was just a great idea i had

go p2p united!

they should make an air line of that

Fletcher (Jim Carrey): "You scratched my car."
Attendant: "Where?"
Fletcher: "Right......there."
Attendant: "Oh that. That was already there."
Fletcher: "Why you.......you LIAR! You know what I'm going to do about this?"
Attendant: "What?"
Fletcher: "Nothing. Because if I take you to small claims court it'll just drain eight hours out of my life and you probably won't show up and if I finally got the judgement you'd just stiff me anyway. So what I'm GONNA DO is piss and moan like an impotent jerk and then bend over and take it up the tailpipe!"
Attendant: "You've been here before haven't you?"


$$$$$


soo funny

Well Chuck the answer is in civil disobedience and possibly open warfare.

Its up to 15 year old hackers to develop viruses that force computers to distribute music instead of launch denial of service attacks. Other actions could be to hack into the RIAA computers and destroy their ability to fight.

Music collections have to be built. Large ones containing 100s of thousands of songs. Then these must be traded among friends. The RIAA can realistically only stop online trading, they can't stop person to person trading.

Buy cds, make a thousand copies and leave them out in front of record stores. Tie them to helium ballons and let thousands of them fly.

How many anti RIAA supporters are there. Could 100,000 people march on washington.

Get on the bus!

raoulduke1, using illegal methods to fight will only discredit thge people and organizations trying to oppose the RIAA. Yes they are doing immoral, questionable and even illegal things, but if we tried them we would end up in court and jail since they have the money to toss at lawyers. Any efforts on our part must be legal, and hold up in court.

Does this put us at a disadvantage? Yes. Do we need to deal with it in a mature, responsible, and respectful legal way? Yes we do if we want to be taken seriously and gain support.

As far as the the mass telephone operations that type of DOS isn't illegal just annoying.

Hey Bill Evans, how many registered users are on this site?
We need to know if we have the numbers to organize mass telephone protesting.

Call the labels 1-800 #'s and piss, moan and rant telling them your boycotting them.


Call 1-800-BAD-BEAT
and tell them your friends (who you know don't share Riaa files) are using p2p to share indie artists but don't tell the operator they're indie (give the artist names and albums)

I think a bunch of people need to make thousand and thousands of CD's of indie music to send to some of the senators and congressman to let them know that we have tons of music and it's not even RIAA junk and to let them know people won't be downloading RIAA crap and neither buying their crap,this is a buyer revolt and they can take their sue"em" all you know where.I'd like to see the look on some of their faces when the delivery guy or gal piles them on their desk like say one monday morn. and call the press to be their and have boycotters be on hand to tell the press what is going on.

lets invade TRL and burn cd's in their studio, and get on the morning shows, you know the street shots they always have that are outside the studio ect. If we make a big enough boom they will listen and report, or so they should.

hey, there ARE pamphlets about how bad the RIAA is. Up in the top left corner of this site, there is the "street team resources" its there for a reason.... street teams

Send a letter to your school/college newspaper advising people of their rights:
You have the right to share (download and upload) any file that is not covered by copyright protection... this includes anything you have produced yourself, any music published before 1923, and anything by the various bands that allow people to trade recordings of live shows (like PJ, DMB, Phish, etc.)
You also have the right to at least download a personal copy of anything that you have purchased.
Write these down, distribute them, make them a mantra.

And then there's MUSIC Anti RIAA music BOUNCE this puppy all over the INTERNET P2P sites College Radio stations and anywhere else you can THINK The We Be Jamin Band "GENERATION D" FREE DOWNLOAD at http://www.soundclick.com/bands/6/thewebejaminbandmusic.htm and you don't even have leave home ha ha

We have to be cool about this and not do anything overtly illegal, or even anything that has the appearance of immorality.
After all, morality is timeless, while things like overzealous copyright laws are merely temporary aberrations.
Let's be frank. A significant portion of the population sees file sharing as theft.
That's the way it is.
It is better to calmly state your reasons for sharing, as I have tried to do in previous posts, than to try to justify it on the basis that everything that is created should be free. This will not ultimately convince everyone.
Work created by someone, whether it be physical (a custom car, piece of furniture, a painting, etc.), or ethereal (ones and zeroes, transmitted through electronic means, which represent the product of creativity), is perceived, and rightly so, as a commodity.
I think we need to stress that we are not in favor of totally ripping (no pun intended) off the system, as reasonable people will understand that this will cause the system to completely collapse.
Under communism, everyone is paid the same, regardless of their contribution (from each according to their means; to each according to their needs, etc). This is a nice theory, but it fails in practice. If I frame an entire room in several hours, and you pound in one nail in the same time [as more or less happened to me when I worked at IBM ], and we are both paid the same salary, then how long is it going to be before I start to just pound in one nail a day ?
There has to be some incentive, or artists will just find something else to do.
The solution is to calmly not buy any riaa-produced CD's, and let a lot of people know your reasons for not doing so.
Give me a while to pull up some other posts and try to compile the start of the list that was requested.
We don’t need the media. This is the age of the internet. The people of this entire planet are truly the “media”.
The protests of the 60's did not really have an impact until the majority of the public, the silent majority [wow, did that saying ever come back to haunt the powers-that-be] began to see the good side of the argument.
I was in the mall at lunch, and the record store was TOTALLY EMPTY.
Be patient.
We have the hammer; our money.
They need us and we don't need them.
Every day that goes by makes us stronger (richer by the amount of money we don't give them) and them weaker.
This is a long fight, but the end is inevitable. A vastly fairer music distribution system will result, and much better music will be created.
To the future...

The Kid

Should call into live talk shows. Sure they have a 10 second timer so they can edit out things they don't like and all. But lie your way onto teh air and yell out "BOYCOTT-RIAA.COM" before they disconnect you. what are they going to do? cut the show off to prevent it from reaching the air?

just go to some of your favorite bands' websites, and if they share mp3s (and acknowledge that they do so - respect the artist and their creations!), download them, open a word doc, and write the band, song title, and link to the mp3, then burn all the mp3s you found AND the word doc containing all the links on a disc. then send it to someone who can raise a voice in this idiocy. explain that you do need mp3s to play on the mp3 players sony so eagerly advertises.

sounds perfectly legal to me.

maybe that gives the right people ideas about the monopoly the riaa-affiliates are trying to create themselves.

Burning RIAA cds would mean we would have to buy them.

Not gonna do it.

Like the concert idea!

Write your reps, sign petitions at eff.org, place boycott-riaa.com bumper stickers in the racks at big chain record stores, write your local papers, magazines, tv shows, give out boycott-riaa t-shirts at trl every day.

Enjoy your life.

Paul

If you haven't done it, eff.org needs 100, 000 signatures and are at 58,000. Go! Do it now! Do it with a grin!

http://www.eff.org/share/petition/

copy and paste the link, damn !

agreeing with 50sKid
-bulkeraser

USED CD's we can buy.

Did you all sign the petition?

http://www.eff.org/share/petition/

Love to you all,

Mother Hen

Yes, we need to reach the sheep (er, I mean John Q. Public) with our message. Do it any way we can. Love some of the ideas I am hearing. The TV/radio ad avenue is an expensive one, so is the major newspaper/print route, but we CAN do it on a local level. Contact your local cable TV provider and see about ad rates on VH1/eMTv and other music channels... you might be supprised that it would be fairly cheap to run a 30 sec spot. In many cases, they will film and produce a spot for free. Just keep it simple and stick to the message. I am working on one to run in East Tennessee.
There are creative ways to fund this, including a statement in the commercial itself that asks for donations to keep the ad running. Our newest CD (all originals) will be available by Christmas and $5 from each sale will fund my local effort to get the message out on radio/tv.
boycott-riaa.com, eff.org, etc. will be prominantly mentioned in the ad. This idea is still all in the planning stages, but I will keep you all informed.

Our FREE CD "Under The Covers" is still available in the meantime!

Shmoo, of Electric Gypsy
http://electricgypsy.iuma.com

Yeah, but did you sign the petition?

http://www.eff.org/share/petition/

Boy, you're all the greatest!

Paul