Entry tags:

copyright, drm, greasemonkey, movies, music, p2p, technology, the pledge

Bad Guy Sticker
There's been quite a bit of interesting copyfight news over on BoingBoing recently. Last week I was reading about Clayton Counts who released a mash-up of the classic Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band. And now this week, not only are EMI, the license holders of the album, trying to sue Clayton despite the fact that he has no money and made none from the mash-up, but they're also trying to sue everybody who heard his work too.

This displeases me.

I've cobbled together a new Greasemonkey script called 'Bad Guy Sticker' for use with the Amazon web site (and hopefully others with a bit of work).

When visiting a product page at Amazon this script will detect the 'label', 'studio' or 'publisher' field from the product's data and test it against a list of MPAA, RIAA, BPI and FACT members. If it finds a match, even a partial one, it will display a warning 'sticker' to let you know that money spent on this item will be used by the Bad Guys to harm your rights.


When you give these idiots money they use it sue people based on nothing but a screen-cap of a p2p IP list, to sue artists who are simply and naturally building on existing culture, to lobby for the extension of copyrights so they can tighten their hold on your culture, to take away your right to control your own property by persuading hardware manufacturers to sell you broken machines, to limit the development of new technologies because it threatens their outmoded business models, to force other countries to submit to their so-called Intellectual Property laws regardless of their own positions, and to find new ways to prevent you from participating in your own culture.

You may think it unlikely that something as simple as not buying certain products could have any impact on this lamentable situation. But regardless of the outcome the question you really need to ask yourself is, can you, in good conscience, continue to fund these activities? Even for those who will continue to buy these products it is important to understand the consequences of doing so.

While using the Bad Guy Sticker you may begin to wonder if there is anything left to buy without losing sleep. Trust me, this sensation passes swiftly. The fact is that the vast majority of the stuff sold by these companies is utter shite and you really won't miss it when it's gone. There is plenty of entertainment available out there from independent and totally benign companies, and there is a whole world of free culture available online. You really don't need to be encouraging content slavery to enjoy yourself.

[ The script can be re-installed from the link above to update the member lists. Any suggestions on additions for the lists to improve matching are welcome, as are any suggestions on optimising and increasing the functionality of the script. I am releasing Bad Guy Sticker to the Public Domain - this is to make it clear that anyone who wishes may produce their own version using this code, for instance you might want to build lists tailored for your region and other online stores. ]