RIAA wants ISPs to pay for their users' P2P use

This has the faint stench of Fascism. Faint nothing, This is Fascism. The RIAA are Iron fist wannabes. Those that Support the RIAA are supporting the ANTICHRIST!

Lets see what happens. No matter what the RIAA does, they will not win!!!

The organizations representing the entertainment industry are virtually seeking to establish an authority to collect fees and taxes of their own from whoever they want and whenever they want. In near future they might be knocking on our doors to seek money and requiring us to file a 'Entertainment Tax Return'. The way their attitude is shaping up is extremely frightening. They feel they are holding us hostage and every day a new proposal is being floated to extort ransom money from public, one way or the other. No one is allowed to take law into his own hand, you cannot go and personaly arrest, detain or harm someone who steals something from you, but these industries are allowed to hack into the Networks owned and operated by other entities. If this is not taking law into ones own hands then what is it? US Congress need to epeditiously address this DMCA related terrorism growing in our own backyard, causing unnecessary public burden. These industries have conveniently forgotten that the public at large that gets indiscriminately accused of stealing their products are the very people who are their customers. Public also needs to wake up to this challenge and take a six month holiday from buying any and all entertainment products to send a message to these indusries. This action will also save money that American public can use to pay down their all time high credit card debt. Seeing the debt go down will be a lot more pleasant experince than buying and using the products of these industries.

I, being an American, am ashamed at the business practices of the RIAA. The Canadians already have a tax on blank CDs but making EVERY subscriber to pay extra because of their mistakes. The RIAA refuse to listen to us, their public, and continue to go on there merry way. This is their fault that all this is happening. They are "shifting the blame". The end justifies the means. The motto for tyrants.

"The organizations representing the entertainment industry are virtually seeking to establish an authority to collect fees and taxes of their own from whoever they want and whenever they want." That is a quite acurate way of summing up the way things are going these days. "Public also needs to wake up to this challenge and take a six month holiday from buying any and all entertainment products to send a message to these indusries." That would be one of the most effective ways to bring forward your opinion and really take a stand against organizations like the RIAA. But can you imagine what kind of a task that would be? We - the people that have a more in-depth look at the situation and visit places like aD - are a very small minority when looking at the whole picture. We could probably organize a boicott, but are we a large enough group to be noted? The average consumer just want´s his goods, and things like copy-protection don´t bother him that much. It´s the masses that need to be informed and mobilized, but that, my friends, is a very hard task.

. . .sure that's it! We'll just kill them softly! Just a few dimes to dollars tax which gets passed on to the consumer. People we need to take a stand against this! Take just two min. of your time today and tell at least one person about what's going on (as if they don't know) and IN your conversation don't forget to mention the word BOYCOTT! Does this mean we get a "unsatisfied customer who got screwed" refund each year.

Broadband is expensive enough in Ireland, let alone trying to add taxes it it!!!! Here, most ISPs, particularily Eirom charge over €100/month for DSL. It's hard enough for them at present to attract customers at this price and if broadband taxes come in, I doubt even the higher income users would want to change from their trust 56k dialup. If these taxes come in, it won't be long before low income users (in other countries) start going back to Dialup. I would say that in the coming years, people will saying "What ever happened to the good old days of unrestricted Internet access".

There's more than the entertainment industry to blame here. Their efforts wouldn't succeed without lawmakers and judges who are ignorant of technology issues and willing to err on the side of their corporate friends and campaign donors. If we want things to change we need to have strong consumer groups that can defend our rights through lobbying and financially supporting their defense. Until then, everyone who uses a computer to legally backup any kind of music, video, or software will be treated more and more like a criminal until fair use rights have been completely eroded away. Given that the current legal trend is toward extending the length of copyrights to as long as the owners can make money from them, we need to be extremely careful to protect the rights of consumers who are being charged for copyrighted materials. The RIAA is essentially saying that they are entitled to damages from parties that they can't prove caused them damage. This is by definition a civil matter that is already covered by existing civil law. If they want to claim that an ISP owes them damages from customers sharing files they first have to prove that the customers caused them damage (not just violated copyright law but actually cost them money). Then they would have to prove in court that the ISP is legally responsible for monitoring the activities of their customers (which by the way is illegal, at least in the US) and that they were negligent in not stopping their customers from causing the damages. Obviously this is not something that the RIAA is either prepared to do, or even capable of as it's obviously contradicted by privacy laws. What the RIAA is trying to do would allow lawmakers to not only define the offense and the penalty, but also pass judgement on those accused of violating the law (without a trial). And better still, it couldn't be enforced without using taxpayer dollars to essentially collect royalties for RIAA members with administration of the enterprise being paid for by the taxpayers. To add fuel to the fire, my wife recently got this email from someone she knows at the Iowa Attorney General's office: Because of the wonderful job the Iowa Atty General's office does for all of us consumers, our office filed a suit w/CD companies for ripping us off over the years. SO, if you've purchased a CD from the years 1995-2000 (and you'll need to check to be sure it works for your particular state if you're not in Iowa), you are eligible to receive a $20 refund by going to this web site & follow the instructions: http://musiccdsettlement.com If you know people who are NOT on the internet, tell them about the 800# that's listed in the web site. Spread the word around because they have all this $$ they're supposed to be paying & not that many people know about it yet, as it hasn't been in the news (not that I know of anyway). How's that to start out the new year?!?! If you're in the US, sign up and tell all your friends about it.

Jesus Christ they never give up. Bunch of fagets.

On behalf of their paying subscribers, I wonder just how much 'sympathy' the various ISPs are going to have for the RIAA in demanding that the ISPs (and hence their subscribers) pay additional fees, when the RIAA is actively lobbying for the legal right to invade those subscriber's personal computers? AT HOME !(spyware & *worse*). The ISPs would lose their subscribers. The P2P software people would stop writing software. It ain't gonna happen. Either One. The RIAA is missing a few cogs in their machinery. Their timing belt is slipping. They forgot to put gas in the tank. They're losing touch with reality. Their desperation shows clearly every time they open their mouths or make a news announcement. They're a fish out of water. -- Klingy --

It's impossible to enforce both technically and constitutionally. Most of the P2P companies are not american companies for a reason, any judgment against them by a US court means nothing, it can't be enforced as they are in another country. ISPs couldn't possibly, technically, even limit P2P use. There are many, very legitimate uses for P2P so they can't have some sort of a blanket policy, and micromanaging millions of file transfers simply can't work.

As a Canadian, I am ashamed to say our government has failed consumers. As said earlier, we pay a "fee" on all blank CD's. This 25 cent fee (on a CD that costs 25 cents!) is suppose to go to artists. I would love to see how much each "group" skims off the top as it gets to those artists. This ISP tax is a sham. I should not have to pay towards a cashgrab to back my data up, and I should not have to pay this to surf the web. They are grasping at straws to gain what ground they can, then it will be just that much harder for consumers to get it back. -Smee

I wouldn't mind paying $1 to $2 extra a month if I knew there would be no spyware and that P2P networks could survive. However just how much of that tax would go to the artists themselves and not the record company. I know I said in an earlier message that I would not mind paying $1 to $2 a month, but I refuse to pay $9 extra a month to support the NPAA and RIAA. If this tax is to become law, they should be forced to take away all copy protection methods imposed both now and in the future on Movies and Music.

If only it were so, but do you really think these organizations will stop copy-protecting material? Or stop hunting down P2P-users? No, it´s just another way for them to make money. The sad things is, they could get this to work. We already pay "tax" when we buy empty CD-R´s, a fee to compensate for all the legal duplication. Federal judges might see this matter as a similar matter, and let the RIAA implement a fee in order to compensate for the artists losses due to P2P usage.

Since it is THIER product that is taking all the bandwidth from the ISP, why doesn't the ISP then charge the RIAA for this usage then? They demand ownership of it then they need to be responsable for it.

I agree with kensher. Sincy they are the cause of so much trafic they should be paying advertising fees to the ISP!! Ok so thats a lil far fetched. But maybe they need to just slack off and get the damn dollar signs out of there eyes.