Gizmodo: Boycott RIAA in March
February 25th, 2007 by Monkey Cory Doctorow:
Will sez, “Gizmodo has decided to declare war against the RIAA, rightly noting that they get their money from us (the consuming public) and that if we don’t like what they do, we can do something about it. It’s a good rant, and they offer nice alternatives to buying RIAA controlled music like attending concerts and buying music from emusic.”
Alright, we’ve been following the RIAA’s increasingly frequent affronts to privacy and free speech lately, and it’s about time we stopped merely bitching and moaning and did something about it. The RIAA has the power to shift public policy and to alter the direction of technology and the Internet for one reason and one reason alone: it’s totally loaded. Without their millions of dollars to throw at lawyers, the RIAA is toothless. They get their money from us, the consumers, and if we don’t like the way they’re behaving, we can let them know with our wallets.
I’ve always been skeptical of entertainment industry boycotts — I question how big a popular movement you can build by telling people not to listen to popular music — but maybe it’s time. I haven’t bought anything from an RIAA member in six months (the new Beatles Love mashup disc), and before that, I’d probably gone six more months. They just aren’t making anything I want anymore, and there’s so much stuff out there in Internet land from creators who aren’t set on destroying democracy, privacy and free speech that it’s almost impossible not to boycott these bastards.
(Thanks, Will!)
Originally by Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing on February 24, 2007, 8:49am
