The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), two organisations that have achieved questionable fame with their lawsuits against young children and grandparents in the United States (also see the resources of the EFF) have announced another round of bloodshed, this time also focussing on Brazil, the "Free Culture Nation".
The so-called "Reproduction Rights Industry" is probably the only industry you’ll encounter that considers it beneficial for their business to sue their customers, including those too young, too old or too poor to defend themselves. And it appears that IFPI itself had second thoughts on the social benefit they were bringing society: Several professors of Brazil’s most renowned law school, the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), wished to hear what IFPI had to say, so they accredited themselves to the press conference on Tuesday, 17 October 2006 at Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro.
When the professors arrived, they were told the room was full (which journalists who were in the room denied) and that IFPI ran out of copies of the press release (yeah, right).
All of this gives an involuntarily clear and obvious image of the mindset of IFPI, RIAA and others and only serves to further diminish the credibility of their claims of usefulness to authors, artists and society at large. They only serve one particular group of companies which artists like Courtney Love describe as the real pirates:
Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is
the act of stealing an artist's work without any intention of paying
for it. I'm not talking about Napster-type software.
I'm talking about major label recording contracts.
Right now it is illegal in Brazil to use your iPod to listen to a CD you bought in the store. So in order to fight back against cultural repression and re-introduce the right of private copying of music that was legally purchased, the FGV has launched an online petition to amend the Brazilian law.
So please go there and sign now.
