RIAA Incredibly Infuriating

We've talked before about the unreal damages for infringement of song files, which at a rough estimate might come to some 1.8 Quadrillion dollars per year.

Now I would think that damages amounting to 27 times the world GDP would be enough, but for the Recording Industry Association of America, that's just the beginning. Their platform for the future of music includes:

• Dramatically Increasing Copyright Damages: the PRO-IP Act the RIAA is pushing would treat each track on a duplicated CD as a separate infringement, increasing the damages for sharing a 10-track CD with your friends from $150,000 to $1.5 million.


• Grabbing A Bigger Cut: the RIAA is arguing before the Copyright Royalty Board that the fee paid to songwriters and publishers for each file sold in online stores should be reduced from 9 cents to 6 cents. (The artists themselves make about 5 cents on the dollar, of course).


• Taking Over Your PC: Wendy previously noted that the RIAA is asking ISPs to filter traffic -- an expensive and invasive technology that can be trivially defeated by the same technology that protects your credit card number in online purchases. Their solution would require every computer user to run special software in order to access the internet, constantly monitoring your traffic in case you do anything wrong.

Normally we talk about law and policy here, but I have to admit I didn't assemble those stories to make a coherent point. The fact that this Association has more voice in Congress on IP issues than, well, every music consumer combined? That physically hurts. That's all I wanted to say.