"if all ISPs in the UK staged a strike by cutting Internet access everywhere for two or three days and claim that would be the only possible way to ensure their customers aren't pirating anything, I am sure that the outrage would force another look at the law. And if they did this 2 different times, like once on Thursday Friday and Saturday, it could cause direct deposit information and payroll services to be interrupted. If they did this on again a week later on lets say Monday and Tuesday, there would be so much upset and confusion that those who think they wasn't effected will be."

Don: Please tell me who you are and what you do.

RIAA: Cara Duckworth, spokeswoman for the RIAA.

Translation: Cara Duckworth, Recording Industry Ass. of America mouthpiece.

Don: What can you tell me about the college deterrence program?

RIAA: Began last February. It was becoming clearer that despite cool new legal services and the ongoing educational efforts, too many students--some of music's biggest fans--were getting their music illegally and learning the wrong lessons about stealing and the law. There had to be a deterrence factor involved so that individuals knew that along with personal consequences (i.e., viruses, spyware infiltrating hard drive) there would also be legal consequences to engaging in illegal downloading behavior. Bringing lawsuits was by no means our first choice, but a necessary step we had to take.

Translation: It seems like the harder we try to make money off those ungrateful little shits the more they turn away from us. I just don't get it, I mean I don't get technology in general so how am I supposed to know about Trojans and viruses... something to do with safe sex, yes? Sony tried giving them that great rootkit for free and they just threw it back in their faces. So now we're going to start dragging our biggest customers through the courts. Makes sense when we think about it.

Don: Why college students?

RIAA: First, it should be clarified that our college campaign is in addition to the lawsuits we file against individuals using commercial ISPs to illegally download and distribute music. Second, college students have reached a stage in life when their music habits are crystallized, and their appreciation for intellectual property has not yet reached its full development. These two points coupled together present challenges to those who would like to be compensated for their creative works. Understanding the value of intellectual property is important to the future job market for many of these students--industries that rely on copyright protection employ more than 11 million workers nationwide and continue to grow.

Translation: Hey, don't get me wrong, we'll make you all pay. But students in particular just don't think the way we want them to, and we at the Ass. are now forced to brainwash them through legal means. Our understanding of intellectual property is firmly fixed in the last century and we want to make damn sure that everyone else's understanding is too. For instance, we are determined not to contemplate any alteration to the standard business model and to do our best to retard technological progress that will inevitably render that model obsolete.

Don: What group of people do you see pirating the most music?

RIAA: While college students used to be some of music's greatest fans, unfortunately that is no longer the case. I would point you to the evidence of the extensiveness of music theft amongst college campuses from Student Monitor and other market research firms to show why we are focusing some of our efforts on universities.

Translation: College brats! Those little bastards! They've got the money, how else did they get into college? They're trying to improve their chances in the job market using money that rightfully belongs to us. If you'd like to see my evidence for this assumption you'll have to buy it, just like we did.

Don: How do you respond to people who say your organization is a group of bullies?

RIAA: I have to step back for a moment. These are certainly heavy issues and none which we take lightly. When an individual is caught illegally downloading music, it sometimes happens that the person creates a stir. The reality of it is that nobody wants to get caught and most people complain when they are. The music industry has lost more than $3 billion in sales over the last few years. Bringing lawsuits is certainly no one's ideal answer--we're well aware of that. But if we had sat on our hands and chosen to do nothing about the piracy problem as the music industry was haemorrhaging jobs and lost sales, imagine what the extent of theft would be today and how the legal marketplace would be struggling to gain traction. The digital music marketplace is demonstrably better because of our efforts.

Translation: They're just whining little crybabies. Wah wah wah, they're picking on me! Wah wah wah, $10,000 per track is too much! Wah wah wah, I don't even own a computer! They're the one's not buying music, they should be giving us money and they're not! Think of all the money we're losing to people who aren't paying for things we never gave them, and trust me: you won't believe how much we never gave them. It's progress that's causing all this. What are we supposed to do just let the world move on and leave us behind? Like hell! If the only way for us to keep our jobs is to make you pay for service you no longer need then so be it. Put up and pay up!

Don: How have you addressed those huge pirating cartels overseas? Are you going for a soft target?

RIAA: Our preference--first and foremost--is to take action against the services themselves that facilitate the illegal downloading and distribution of copyrighted works. We are actively assisting efforts by policy makers in Washington to encourage countries whose copyright laws have not kept up with the times or who do not appropriately enforce intellectual property violations. Additionally, we are affiliated with IFPI, which represents the interest of the global music community and assists in the enforcement of copyright infringement cases outside of the U.S.

Translation: You mean the physical pirates, the ones selling counterfeit CDs? What, are you shitting me? Some of those guys are real criminals, they got guns and stuff. And they don't speak American so... you know... Oh wait, do you mean The Pirate Bay? Those fuckers! Sweden's turning into some kind of commie paradise. We gotta fix that as soon as possible and it takes money to get laws passed so we need to sue more students, on the double. That thing with getting Russia's WTO membership on the line, that was great move; maybe we could try something like that.

Don: Do you think your policy of lawsuits and settlements work?

RIAA: Absolutely. Since we began this initiative, we've seen a P2P problem that once was growing at dizzying speeds essentially flatten out. People are now more aware of what is legal and illegal when it comes to downloading music. But more importantly, bringing lawsuits is only one piece of the pie--we are actively investing resources in the education of students of all ages on the value of music and importance of copyrights and, perhaps most importantly, music companies are continuously partnering with exciting new services that offer fans an array of innovative opportunities to access their favourite music.

Translation: P2P has stopped growing. That means we're winning. There is absolutely no need to interpret this result as a saturation of the P2P market. You don't honestly believe that everyone who is going to share is already sharing do you? No. That was us. We did that. And we're going to press our advantage by continuing to terrify your kids into thinking the way we want them to, and we'll pay for that by suing the ones that don't learn. See how that works? Also, we're going to find ways to monetise just about everything you can do with music, including things no one's thought of yet. That will make everyone feel better about it.

Don: Why do you think you're such a disliked organization?

RIAA: I don't agree with the loaded premise of the question. In some online quarters, there may be lots of heat about the tough stands we sometimes must take. But amongst the general public, the favorability ratings of the record industry remain as positive as ever and surpass other forms of entertainment like movie or TV studios. I believe my answer to question No. 5 can apply here as well. But let it be said--the RIAA is much more than lawsuits. For example, we also are responsible for the Gold & Platinum program awarding artists who have achieved successful album sales and are active proponents of free speech in music. But no one likes lawsuits, and no one likes to get caught. It's not an ideal situation for any party involved. But with all the new, innovative legal alternatives in the marketplace (and more emerging on almost a daily basis), the music community is proactively offering fans ways to avoid lawsuits and get their favorite music at affordable prices.

Translation: Nonsense, there are lots of people who like us. It's just the ones we take money from or whose business model conflicts with our own that seem to have a problem. Like music lovers... and artists... and consumer groups, and electronics manufacturers, civil rights groups, Swedish communist politicians, anyone who has spent more than a few minutes actually thinking logically about the issues... oh, and the record labels too, those guys have seriously got the hump these days. Hmm, I guess we've bribed a few musicians and politicians into liking us though. And once our plans come to fruition and music lovers have no other option but to do what we tell them, we'll just tell them to like us. It'll be great!

Don: How do you respond to the people who say you're going after grandmothers and young children when you should be going after real criminals in gunships?

RIAA: I'd give them the facts and encourage them not to believe everything they read that aggressively villainizes the organization. We have a physical antipiracy unit that assists law enforcement agents in shutting down piracy operations both big and small. Oftentimes street peddlers selling bootlegged copies of music are also involved in large-scale drug and weapons trafficking, and we find clear evidence of that on raids. As for individuals themselves, we have no way of screening defendants based on demographics, socioeconomic status, or perceived sympathy. Upon initial discovery of a violation, we have an IP address, a sampling of the files that were shared, and a timestamp of the activity. We consistently follow the prescribed legal process to obtain identifying information and always try to be fair and reasonable in resolving each of our cases.

Translation: We'll go after anyone who crosses us, period. We're totally ruthless. Hell, if you're dead we'll just take what we need from your family. You remember that now, next time you start up your BT client. We use technology that produces a set of numbers that provides incontrovertible proof that the people we say guilty are guilty. We don't need to worry about network architecture, or shared IPs, or multiplexing and all that confusing stuff, that just misleads the courts. All they need to know is that we can prove anything we need to with numbers... Except street peddlers, they don't have IP addresses so they're harder to come by. Imagine if we put enough people out on the street to find those guys, there wouldn't be anybody left at the office to sue students.

Don: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

RIAA: Regarding our college initiative, a university's role in reducing the level of piracy on its campus cannot be overemphasized. We have consistently said that the more proactive a school is in the education of its students regarding its IT and enforcement policies, the offering of great legal alternatives so that students can have access to their favorite music (at deeply discounted prices or even for free), and most importantly, implementing effective technology that helps protect the integrity of its network, will lead to fewer instances of violations and fewer instances of hearing from us--a win for everybody!

Translation: We're doing all we can to fight music lovers. In fact, we think we're doing too much! So we need colleges who would otherwise be sitting there minding their own business to do our job for us, preferably without any reimbursement. If they don't then we'll just wring some more cash out of the student body and use it to bribe a few more politicians to put the financial frighteners on them. That's how it works: we bribe the politicians, the politicians scare the colleges, the colleges scare their students, the students give us money. It doesn't end there, of course: once we have our claws in them we can use the colleges to collect our money for us, straight from the students, on the pretence of providing them with legal access to music. And anyone who doesn't pay must be a pirate - we can pick them like fruit!

"Decriminalizing all non-commercial file sharing and forcing the market to adapt is not just the best solution. It’s the only solution, unless we want an ever more extensive control of what citizens do on the Internet. Politicians who play for the antipiracy team should be aware that they have allied themselves with a special interest that is never satisfied and that will always demand that we take additional steps toward the ultimate control state. Today they want to transform the Internet Service Providers into an online police force, and the Antipiracy Bureau wants the authority for themselves to extract the identities of file sharers. Then they can drag the 15-year-old girl who downloaded a Britney Spears song to civil court and sue her."

"One of the world's most-used pirate film websites has been closed after providing links to illegal versions of major Hollywood hits and TV shows.

The first closure of a major UK-based pirate site was also accompanied by raids and an arrest, the anti-piracy group Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) said today.

A 26-year-old man from Cheltenham was arrested on Thursday in connection with offences relating to the facilitation of copyright infringement on the internet, Fact said.

Fact claims that tv-links.co.uk was providing links to illegal film content that had been camcorder recorded from cinemas and then uploaded to the internet. The site also provided links to TV shows that were being illegally distributed."

- guardian.co.uk

"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone."
- Jack Valenti (1921 - 2007), President of the MPAA, in his testimony to the House of Representatives, 1982.

ABC has held discussions on the use of technology that would disable the fast-forward button on DVRs, according to ABC President of Advertising Sales Mike Shaw, with the primary goal to allow TV commercials to run as intended.

"I would love it if the MSOs, during the deployment of the new DVRs they're putting out there, would disable the fast-forward [button]," Shaw said.

While MSOs risk losing some of their DVR customers if fast-forwarding were blocked, Shaw said the cable operators--who are beefing up their own local ad sales operations--"are in the same business we're in." "They've got to sell ads too," he said. "So if everybody's skipping everybody's ads, that's not a long-term business model for them either."

Shaw also threw cold water on the idea that neutering the fast-forward option would result in a consumer backlash. He suggested that consumers prefer DVRs for their ability to facilitate on-demand viewing and not ad-zapping--and consumers might warm to the idea that anytime viewing brings with it a tradeoff in the form of unavoidable commercial viewing. - from mediapost.com (via BoingBoing)

"Supporters of Intelligent Design think that if they see something they don't understand, it must be God; they fail to recognise that they themselves are part of evolution. It appeals to ignorance, which is why there is a lot of it in American politics at the moment."
- Steve Jones, professor of genetics at UCL, reported in The Observer, 'How the penguin's life story inspired the US religious right', 18 September 2005.

Britain has pursued a policy of multiculturalism – allowing people of different cultures to settle without expecting them to integrate into society. Often the authorities have seemed more concerned with encouraging distinctive identities than with promoting common values of nationhood. – David Davis, (shadow home secretary and potential Conservative part leader), The Daily Telegraph, 3rd August 2005.

Officials report massive crater, some super-powers and only minor monster creation.

Dougal Maguire - The Washington Post reported the gormless priest from Craggy Island was in the running to become Pope. The cleric from 'Father Ted' was said to be a "long shot at 1000-1" after his name was listed among contenders by Paddy Power [Irish betting chain] as a joke.