RIAA Sued By Robert Santangelo

One of my hot buttons is the whole Digital Rights Management (DRM) - RIAA - copyright scene. The RIAA’s ‘head in the sand’ avoidance of the new reality of the digital age, and its willingness to continue to punish not only its customers, but also its artists, makes me see red. No one at RIAA is doing any creative thinking about a new business model now that the old one is broken.

The Canadian government charges a levy on blank memory materials (blank CDs and DVDs, DATs, memory cards, memory sticks, etc.) that is remitted to the Canadian Private Copying Collective, who then remit payments to individual copyright holders. This helps to make up for the losses inflicted by downloading.

If you watch the video on this blog entry about the Robert Santangelo suit, you’ll notice that Cary Sherman (RIAA’s president) doesn’t respond to the interviewer’s questions but merely parrots the RIAA line (Sherman is introduced at 9:43 of the video).

There is a website here that is collecting donations for Patti Santangelo’s legal fees (Patti is Robert’s mother). I encourage you to go there and make a donation.

Other related news:

RIAA stung by wrongfully accused ‘pirate’
Warner music boss Edgar Bronfman declines to sue his children
RIAA sues computer-less family, 234 others, for file sharing
Bill Gates slams DRM systems
Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Music
Consumer group blasts Jobs’ DRM letter
The Electronic Freedom Foundation’s Fair Use and DRM page
Recording Industry vs The People - A blog devoted to the RIAA’s lawsuits of intimidation brought against ordinary working people

If you cannot view the video that is under the link “parrots“, you’ll need to download the Google Video Player.