[CLUE-Talk] Author, Consumer, and Computer Owner Protection and Security (ACCOPS) Act of 2003

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Mon, 2003-07-28 at 16:55, Jed S. Baer wrote:

> Some time ago, Cringley (PBS geek columnist) made the point that everyone
> who is using P2P networks to share music/movies should write their
> representatives a letter saying "I'm a criminal". Well, how many
> Napster/Kazaa/Gnutella users think of themselves as the latter day
> equivalent of Rosa Parks?

Well, I don't really buy the "civil disobedience" bit... if you want to
hurt the RIAA/MPAA, boycott them, stop buying their stuff, stop
listening to their stuff, and support music/movies/whatever from
companies and artists not affiliated with them. The problem with this,
of course, is that the people who are using Kazaa and whatnot would
actually have to give up some of the entertainment they enjoy for a
while until the entertainment companies really see their profits heading
down the toilet. If you could organize a one-month boycott of all
products produced by the MPAA/RIAA -- movies, CDs, DVDs, television
shows, radio programs... they'd be backing off in a big hurry. That,
however, would involve inconvenience and too much commitment for the
average citizen... 

Rosa Parks wasn't doing ANYTHING wrong by refusing to give up her seat
to a white man. "Sharing" music or movies in this fashion that the
copyright owner doesn't want shared is (at least in my opinion) wrong. 

The problem is that 1) the reaction to file sharing is far out of
proportion to the reality of the problem, 2) the lawmakers and the
entertainment industry refuse to address the reasons why people might
not be buying the music they're looking to download, 3) enforcement is
selective. If the owner of a porno magazine went to lawmakers and
complained that their copyrighted pornography was being shared on KaZaa,
they wouldn't be getting this kind of response. So, apparently, some
people's rights to protect their copyrighted materials are more
important than other people's. 

Zonker
-- 
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
jzb at dissociatedpress.net
Aim: zonkerjoe
http://www.dissociatedpress.net