Legal/Government

Now what RIAA?? (part III)

Continuing the Now what RIAA? series (part I, part II), C-Net writes about congresscritters at CES:

Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., joined others in criticizing the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for suing alleged music swappers, calling the RIAA's legal tactics heavy-handed and against the intent of U.S. copyright laws, including the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

"The fundamental problem with the approach of the RIAA took is that it was based on legislation that created special property rights," Sununu said. "Suddenly, you had a private entity that's able to issue subpoenas, which is unprecedented."

"That's not what the DMCA was intended to do," he said. "We can't be writing legislation that gives holders of certain types of intellectual property special rights...We can't carve out special legislation to give special powers to certain types of content."

With the current trend of the courts giving the RIAA the cold shoulder, this could be significant. If something does come of it (mouthing off at a trade show is easy -- getting good bills passed is a lot harder) then it would further restrict the cache of laws that the RIAA/MPAA have bought themselves over the last few years. Let's hope that this is going to be the case -- I'll keep watching this space with high hopes.

Wasn't John Sununu involved in some using travel scandal a while back??

Posted by Mayhem at January 14, 2004 01:56 PM