RIAA Pushes More Anti-Privacy Legislation, Group Says

The Digital Freedom group released a statement on Monday warning that more "Big Brother" amendments are being proposed in the Senate, this time backed by the RIAA in its efforts to crack down hard on illegal downloading and file sharing.

The RIAA is targeting university and college students this time.

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), which has a virtual monopoly on all recorded music in the United States, has long expressed the feeling that college-age young people are the ones most guilty of illegally downloading and sharing music via the Internet, bilking recording labels and artists (but especially the labels) out of billions of dollars.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is planning the introduction of an amendment to the Higher Education Reauthorization Act to further the efforts of the RIAA. The amendment would reportedly be offered during the debate of S. 1642, which would force universities to adopt a policy and reporting procedure with regards to the "illegal downloading and distribution of copyrighted material" while requiring the Secretary of Education to make an annual to Congress stating those universities which have received the top 25 most warnings to campus computer users for copyright infringement and violations.

"This amendment is the just latest in a series of legislative efforts by wealthy record labels to require our tax dollars to be spent on policing college students. No one supports illegal downloading or file sharing, but the Digital Freedom Campaign and its members believe that universities have more urgent things to do with their scarce budgets than collect information on their students for the government and for the RIAA. Academic resources would be better spent educating students rather than spying on them at the behest of large corporations," said Jennifer Stoltz, a spokesperson for the Digital Freedom Campaign.

The RIAA has had difficulties adjusting to the realities of the way music recordings are stored and shared in the digital age of the 21st century and has felt the pinch in its wallet. Sales of traditional-format music recordings such as CD ROMs have been down considerably on a global scale in the past several years, and the RIAA blames this largely on bootlegs or pirated copies of digital music recordings that are swapped, listened to, or burned, often for free, on the Internet.

Critics of the RIAA, who include the vast majority of professional musicians, say that people have been making their own "free" copies of recorded music or concerts for decades without bringing harm to the wallets of recording industry executives and salesmen. For example, before CDs were the norm, people often made cassette recordings of songs from vinyl albums or from the radio.

RIAA supporters counter that today's digital copies are vastly better-sounding than the analog media days and making one essentially amounts to intellectual property theft.

Critics also say that the RIAA is simply trying to make up for revenues that is has lost by its member recording labels overcharging for CDs. Companies like Napster have become legal by charging membership fees and charging for the downloads of certain songs and paying out part of the charges in royalties and fees to labels and artists, but still offer music with lower prices and greater ranges of choice than recording stores do.

The Digital Freedom University chapters provide a foundation to educate college and university students in better understanding their "fair use" rights in the digital age. Digital Freedom is strongly opposed to illegal downloads and piracy but calls the actions by the RIAA mere intimidation and retribution tactics.

Sources of information:
Digital Freedom (PR Newswire), "'Big Brother Amendment' Requires Student Monitoring and Annual Reports"