However, as we have suggested organizations like RIAA, the MPAA and BSA always try to claim that file sharing (in any form) is a massively harmful and violating thing. They (the collective copyright industry) has even tried to lump file sharers into the same group as terrorists. Given their current life in fantasy land I can now see how they arrived at these misguided conclusions.

The reality of the situation is that copyright holders have been working very hard to extend the protections so that they maintain the rights to software, music, movies, art forever. This was never the intention for copyright or for patents. It was intended to give the artist/creator time to reap the benefits of their hard work and then it was to be available for the benefit of the rest of the world. By extending the time that these rights are held they are actually hurting progress and stomping on the fundamental rights that people are supposed to have.

Their actions have one far beyond protecting their rights. They now push out blanket takedown requests without even verifying if the link in question is actually infringing. They demand domain seizures with little to no evidence of any wrong doing and they trample individual rights and freedoms in the name of maintaining high revenue streams.

Of course this is not the fairy tale they are trying to portray to congress and the people in charge. Here they pain themselves as the victim and the hero in a never ending struggle against the bad guys. They use claims like: “We must end this assault on our humanity and the misappropriation of fundamental human rights. If the protection of expression is itself a restriction on freedom of expression, then we have entered a metaphysical Wonderland that stands logic on its head, and undermines core, shared global values about personhood”

You guess is as good as mine as to what that all really means other than “hey congress, please give us the right to do what we want to ensure we maintain high revenue streams” If this means they get to monitor all of your data, files, traffic etc then that is ok all in the name of protecting their personhood and humanity. To call this attempt a joke is a severe understatement. Considering the music industry’s history of abusing artists for their profit we think they really have a lot of balls to try and claim protection under any form of human rights.

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