Another RIAA First

Pity the poor RIAA. I haven't seen anything going their way for some time now. The latest is they lost their effort to block webcasting of RIAA's latest lawsuit against a Boston University student, represented by a Harvard Law professor. RIAA hates publicity that their marketing team didn't produce. This comes on the heels of the Jamie Thomas case being overturned and loosing a price fixing case. The RIAA still has not won a single case against a file sharer, even with tougher laws that compromise privacy.

Can there be more bad news for the RIAA? Yes, of course when it's as ridiculous as this has been. First, the impossible happened (per RIAA) which is Amazon's top selling album for 2008 was voluntarily released online, for free, to P2P bit torrent sites such as Pirate Bay (NIN) and still sold well. Second, it seems more and more people are realizing that self-publishing their own music is not only do-able, but profitable as well.

It's too bad that Congress is still living on another planet than most of us. To equalize the division is Lessing's newest campaign, a donor strike. You can catch his talk on TED about how copyright laws are strangling creativity.

However, none of this matters to governments and organizations seeking control anyway they can. In response, there's Herdict. 

UPDATE: Monty Python's free web video increased DVD sales by 23,000 percent Hard to argue with that!

Lessing v. Colbert

"HBO got the exclusive right to broadcast Sunday's inaugural concert. They are now firing off take-down notices against YouTube posts of clips of the concert, even privately filmed ones--and making them stick. No question of fair use or who made the video." (Even private cell phone videos. How does that prevent HBO from making their profit from the clips they have? Wasn't the event free and funded by taxpayers?)