should we boycott the RIAA?

[method77]

From Dionysians.org by Eclectica:

When the RIAA launched its first lawsuits against filesharers on September 8th 2003, there was a call afterwards to boycott purchases from the RIAA member companies by downhillbattle.org and p2pnet.net with a joint project called Stop RIAA Lawsuits Coalition. They weren't the first to call for a boycott of the RIAA, nor the last, but their timing was good because it came not long after the first RIAA lawsuits. At the time I signed up this website, along with a couple of hundred others that also signed on in support of the boycott.

Boycotting is an economic action that puts pressure on a company to reform its ways and to behave responsibly. In modern history the best example I can think of was the one in Montgomery Alabama in 1955 by people who were outraged that Rosa Parks had to sit in the back of the bus because of her perceived Race. Staging a boycott is like what union workers do when staging a strike. You make sacrifices to show someone that you are unhappy and will not accept the way business is conducted. With the bus boycott it made sense: they did not want to pay a bus fare when it meant that they would get unsatisfactory treatment as customers. Their boycott was an economic protest and a social protest. In the end it was a Supreme Court ruling that stopped the policy of Racial discrimination on the bus, rather than the conscience of the bus company.

I wonder what people expect when participating in a boycott. By putting economic pressure on a company, they are encouraging the company to change its ways by finding that it is more profitable to behave in a certain way that the boycotters would like to see. Yet every victory that occurs must feel somewhat shallow on the part of the boycotters, because they will know that the reason their target changed its ways was that it was economical to do so, and not because it involved a change of conscience. What bothers me about that is the dishonesty behind it. After the boycott has ended you end up giving people your business when you know that they are still the same scumbags as before, but only this time they are a little more suave and now they smile to you and talk sweetly while they take your money. Is that really what we want out of a boycott?

I do not have the Christian mindset, so I do not love my enemies or consider them to be reformable. I believe there are just some people who are plain greedy, evil, and ill mannered, and rather than trying to reform them into playing nice through pressure like a boycott I think that they must be either ignored, rendered impotent, or destroyed. As for the RIAA, the attempt to boycott them suggests that they are worthy of being reformed or capable of behaving in a respectable manner. There is no good in the RIAA so there is no point trying to reform them or change their ways. Instead we should focus on a constructive way to deal with their existence; seeking changes in the law to prevent the abuse and harassment of people that occurs with the filing of friviolous civil lawsuits, or changes in the law to restrict the ownership and power of people who claim to have intellectual property that is protected by copyright.

There is another reason why I oppose a boycott of the RIAA. It is because a boycott is an economic statement. In the world of p2p filesharing, the uncorrupted lot of us do not share or download mp3s because we are mad about CDs being too expensive, but because we love our music and we love to share our music with our peers. So there is no economic statement to be made on our part. We will continue sharing and acquiring our music in whatever manner we choose to, because we are music lovers, regardless of the buzz of lawsuits and who claims to own the music. We know that we own the music because we are its fans. Music is life; we could not live without our music and the good feeling we get when we share it with our peers. Here's to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness.

[rainbowdemon]

Good article. Some very good points. But the way I see it, I have 2 choices.

1. Give my hard-earned money to a greedy monolith in return for an overpriced and substandard product. Because they might sue me if I don't.

2. Get any kind of music I want, any way I want it, for free. And all I have to do in return is share it with others.

Ummmm......let me think about that for a while!!

[method77]

I boycott not for the price but for the tactics they use against p2p users.

Even if they sell it for 5 euros, I'd still get it from the net for free. It's faster too

[Amber]

I really think that if they'd sell CD's like this...

pick the songs you want..burn it that way...charge per song...

I'd buy it. I want to be able to pick and choose what I want and when I want it.

Not to mention the fact that the RIAA are making more damn money than the artists but they call me the criminal...is INSANE

Can we all say....bend over and take it like a good lil bitch? :horny:

[Meehowski]

I've not puchased a CD since..........1997.........

I knew then........

[eclectica]

I have something like 900 mp3s in my collection and about 400 CDs, so most of my music for playing time exists in CDs, but in diversity exists in mp3s. Maybe half of those CDs are RIAA material, and even less with the mp3s. I like buying CDs because it is a complete package with album art or information in a booklet, and I can play CDs in more places than mp3s, which I can only play on my home computer.

Looking through my collection of music, I do not concern myself whether this one is owned by the RIAA or not. The only thing I care about is that it is in a free digital format and not restricted by copy protection or DRM. I have no copy protected CDs or wma files in my music collection.

It does not matter to me who claims to own the music, because as far as I'm concerned I own all the music that I possess. I can rip, mix, and burn it and freely share it with my peers. Music means nothing without the listeners; I own the music, not the RIAA. What bothers me about the "boycott RIAA" mindset is that it lends support to the notion that the RIAA owns the music.

I'm not saying that we should go out and start buying more RIAA material than normal. What I'm saying is that the fact that it is RIAA material shouldn't stop you from buying it.

Edited February 23, 2005 by eclectica