The Real Pirates

  • Wired News: RIAA Wants to Hack Your PC. The recording industry wants the right to hack into your computer and delete your stolen MP3s. It’s no joke. Lobbyists for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) tried to glue this hacking-authorization amendment onto a mammoth anti-terrorism bill that Congress approved last week.
  • Wall Street Journal: DOJ expands online music probe. The Justice Department widened its antitrust investigation of the online music business, sending civil subpoenas across the industry that focused on alleged use of copyright rules and licensing practices to control distribution.

    The entertainment industry just can’t help itself. It sees every piece of personal technology that it doesn’t control as a piracy device, nothing more or less.

    So the industry is pushing for a variety of measures to control all kinds of distribution, and to punish anyone who wants to exert fair use rights. The threat to all of us is profound if these pirates get away with their plunder.

    At long last, however, the antitrust enforcers are waking up to the fact that this cartel is working to own and control every medium of distribution. And maybe, just maybe, law enforcement will act to curb the cartel.

    No one condones real piracy — the people who make thousands of copies of copyrighted material and sell it. But to ban fair use as a way of preventing casual copying, which has gone on for decades, is even more dangerous.

    In their endless greed, the entertainment moguls are showing us who the real pirates are. They should look in the mirror.

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