Artists contemplating suing RIAA

So where does all the money from those lawsuits against grandmothers, students and dead people that the RIAA brings go? Not to the artists, apparently. Artists are now contemplating taking legal action against the RIAA for their "fair share" of the winnings.

I don't know whether to cheer because the RIAA might be losing some money, or cry because the artists are just as shortsighted. Anytime you hear a group complaining that the money it receives is not "fair," you know the lobbyists and lawyers can't be far off...

So this is the future of music? Artists suing the RIAA? The RIAA suing everyone else? Everyone bickering over the winnings? And what about all of the other "collection" agencies? How depressing. At least I have isohunt.

RIAA affiliates hijack Shareaza.com, threaten suit

There's bad, there's low, and then there's RIAA and friends:

"Late last year a company affiliated with the French RIAA hijacked the Shareaza.com domain name from the original, open source project's owner. They are passing off their own for-pay software, which violates the GPL, as the real thing. Now, having stolen the Shareaza project's identity, the scammers are threatening legal action to shut down the real open source team."

Kind of sad, kind of funny

This is a leaked official RIAA training video produced with the National District Attorneys Association telling U.S. prosecutors why they should bust music pirates: Because it'll lead them to "everything from handguns to large quantities of cocaine [and] marijuana," not to mention terrorists and murderers!

The whole video is over 60 minutes long—these are just two of the more outrageous minutes with Jim Dedman, from the NDAA, interviewing Deborah Robinson and Frank Walters from the RIAA about the benefits of going SWAT on music pirates. At one point, Walters says the piracy/drug connection can be so bad that you get asked "When you buy a CD, would you like it with or without—the with is enclosing a piece of crack or whatever the case may be.

http://gizmodo.com/358648/leaked-riaa-training-video-find-pirates--find-crack+dealing-terrorist-murderers-too

DHS and more domestic spying

Yet again, the government has decided that it's a good idea to spy on its own citizens. This time, it's not via wiretapping but by satellite. Apparently, DHS is going to be able to peer into my house via infrared technology whenever they want. My favorite quote from the story, however, is this irrelevant point:

The new plan explicitly states that existing laws which prevent the government from spying on citizens would remain in effect, the official said. Under no circumstances, for instance, would the program be used to intercept verbal and written conversations.

And I promise not to manufacture munitions with this banana. These satellites take pictures, they don't tap phone calls.

NYC Subway Police with Machine Guns

My life keeps looking more and more like the society in Half-Life 2. Police in the New York City subway are apparently now carrying machine guns and wearing full body armor all over the place. Great, this CLEARLY protects us from those equally heavily-armed terrorists that are running around America's transit systems. I wonder how many innocent commuters are going to be riddled with M-4 bullets after the smoke clears.

RIAA, again, fights to lower artists' royalties

Well, look who isn't sticking up for those starving artists (again). It's their old "friend" the RIAA. The spin the RIAA is putting on this issue is making even me dizzy:

"Record companies are suffering a contraction of their business at a time when music publisher revenues and margins have increased markedly," the trade group wrote. "While record companies have been forced to drastically cut costs and employees, music publisher catalogs have increased in value due to steadily rising mechanical royalty rates and alternative revenue streams made possible, but not enjoyed, by record companies."

Sharia death sentance in Afghanistan for man supporting women's liberation

This from a country that we have "liberated?" From Slashdot:

"A journalism student in Afghanistan has been sentenced to death by a Sharia court for downloading and sharing a report criticizing the treatment of women in some Islamic countries. The student was accused of blasphemy and tried without representation. According to Reporters Without Borders, sixty people are currently in jail worldwide for criticizing governments online, fifty of them in China, but this may be the first time someone has been sentenced to death for using the internet. Internet censorship is on the rise worldwide, according to The OpenNet Initiative."

NFL and copyright vs. The Faithful

So it seems that the NFL has convinced legislators to put its ridiculous preferences into law. Case in point: a law the NFL was trotting out recently to disallow anyone other than sportsbars from showing an NFL broadcast in public on a screen larger than 55 inches across. The NFL is making this somewhat of a habit, preventing church-goers from gathering to watch the Super Bowl in their houses of worship this year as well as last. The copyright insanity continues...