The RIAA
Taking Back Your Rights
I have not been a piracy advocate at any point during my time as a writer, but as these jack-booted thugs that represent huge corporate entities like the RIAA have kept kicking our collective heads into the sidewalk, a fine line has developed. They are trying to shove copy protection down our throats, and are, in my opinion, now infringing on our rights to Fair Use.
Why is this important? I'll fill you in on a couple of things. I have found out that my insurance company, State Farm Insurance, has specifically excluded audio CD's from policy coverage. This means, if you have say 100 of your music CD's in a zipper-case in your car and they get stolen, you are out of luck. (side thought - I wonder if this change was sponsored by the RIAA?) The same goes with audio cassettes. Other insurance companies may have already taken the same steps. As a result, it is more imperative than ever to be able to be allowed to make the legal backup copies of your original disks as provided by law.
There are other issues about the RIAA that get under my skin. First, they have pushed to cease production of CD singles, hoping to force users to purchase an entire CD even if they wish to get only a single song. They are toying with an "Enhanced CD" that will contain say half the songs on a CD with enhanced content, but they will be between half and two-thirds the price. Hardly a bargain.
In addition, you are starting to see CD's produced with apparent malicious intent, such as the Celine Dion CD from Sony, which is specifically designed not to play on computers of any kind. According to people in Germany, where the disk has been test released, the new CD crashes your computer, causing you to lose data in memory, and perhaps data from unclosed files on your disks.
This entire situation is getting out of hand. There are honest and legitimate reasons why we should be allowed to backup our content, be it data or audio. Yet the RIAA is encouraging measures that are completely contrary to fair use and fair access. If you want only one song you must fork out $20 or so for a CD? I really don't think so. CD's designed to crash your computer and prevent you from making MP3's out of music you paid for? Please. Enhanced CD's? Like we are supposed to trust the record companies to install software on our PC's.
More Legal Talk
Before we go further, let's cover an important point. There is a concern about recording radio broadcasts for personal use. I have found a simple passage with some links to not-so-simple passages that explains things pretty well. Start by reading the question and the answer and following the links at the end of the paragraph.
Exercising The Mind
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