The War Approaches Your Door

News Item One: RIAA Gets Into “Sharing,” Too College students “share” files; now they’re going to “share” between $12,000-$17,000 each with the RIAA.

News Item Two: RIAA To Chat With You Shortly? RIAA plans to send a million IMs a week to those “sharing” files.

The IM will read in part:

“It appears that you are offering copyrighted music to others from your computer. Distributing or downloading copyrighted music on the Internet without permission from the copyright owner is ILLEGAL…When you offer music on these systems, you are not anonymous and you can easily be identified.”

This exercise ought to provide them with a nice little list to send to all the ISPs should Verizon be forced to turn over the names of file-sharing users.

That’s the last step of the puzzle. Should they get that, there’s nothing legal to stop RIAA from sending you a legal notice rather than an IM which will put you in the same situation as those college students.

Are you ready for that?

Should you get that IM, you’ll be in the front of the line for possible lawsuits. Should that happen, you really, really, really ought to consider stopping.

Uhhh, if you haven’t noticed already, these people are after you. Rightly or wrongly, they think they’re fighting for their companies’ lives, and are taking the actions they think will save them.

They’ll probably start off slowly, but I frankly don’t think people are going to take the hint until they go all the way with this and start mass lawsuits. I don’t think RIAA wants to do this at the moment, but I think events are going to suck them into that eventually when lesser steps don’t work.

You really need to ask yourself, “Am I ready, willing and able to fight should the war come to my door?”

Whether you like it or not, and despite what you may have heard, the RIAA has the law on its side. Not a single court has said or even come close to saying that distribution of copyrighted material is legal. They’ll ruled against the sharers every single time.

The recent Grokster case has nothing to do with this. What it said was the equivalent of “if there’s a stabbing, you can’t sue the knife maker.” It offers no protection for the stabber.

Seeing What You Want To See

I can’t help but compare this situation to the first Gulf War. Believe it or not, Saddam Hussein didn’t believe the U.S. and Company were going to attack until just befoer they did. Like George Sr. sent a half-million men and millions of tons of equipment half-way around the world just to air them out.

There was a high-end Iraqi military guy who told Mr. Hussein essentially, “Uhhhh, the Yanks ARE coming, and we’re going to lose.” Saddam didn’t want to hear it.

I know exactly how that Iraqi military guy must have felt. That’s what I feel like writing these pieces.

If you get nothing else from this piece, get this: These people are out to get you and they CAN get you.

At least realize this is a fight, and that the war could well come to your doorstep.

Those who have wrapped themselves around this “cause” need as much cannon fodder as they can get, as many potential victims as they can get.

Do you want to be cannon fodder? Are you ready for that? Every cause has its casualties. Are you ready to be one?

If you want to, fine, but be ready to pay the price. If you don’t, then don’t be an unwitting stooge who doesn’t even know he’s in a war.

Email Ed

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