[solaris]

“If the goal is to reduce file sharing, it’s a failure.”

That’s EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) lawyer Fred von Lohmann on the efforts of Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG and their RIAA to use the US civil legal system to terrorize people into abandoning P2P filesharing.

It comes in an excellent Wired story by David Kravets which says it’s now five years since the Big 4’s RIAA first launched its bizarre sue ‘em all marketing campaign against the Big 4’s own customers.

p2pnet was one of the first sites to run regular posts on the RIAA’s depredations against families across America, and the only one to point out how the entertainment cartel-inspired Joint Committee of Higher Education and Entertainment Communities was (and still is) used to turn US schools into corporate music marketing divisions and enforcement units, funded by taxpayers and using teachers and administrators as unpaid stuff.

Now, approaching 40,000 men, women and even young children have been on the wrong end of subpoenas initiated by the Big 4.

The labels claim they’re only trying to protect their investments — that files shared equal sales lost, an assertion roundly and efficiently dismissed in a number of authoritative studies.

The truth is: the multi-million-dollar campaign was launched not to stop file sharing, but to enable Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US) to gain complete and total control of who distributes music online, and how they do it.

More on this here: http://www.p2pnet.net/story/16915