December 13, 2005

musicunited.org are LIARS


So, RIAA supports musicunited.org, one site making publicity against "piracy". I have nothing against fighting piracy, and even think that instructing people not to steal is a good thing. But being against p2p networks just because you might use it for illegal purposes is the same thing that telling that knifes are evil because you can use it to commit murder. And that's what they say: their site is full of lies like:
The unauthorized reproduction and distribution of copyrighted music is JUST AS ILLEGAL AS SHOPLIFTING A CD.

This is wrong: The unauthorized reproduction and distribution of copyrighted music is illegal because it's copyright infringement; shoplifting a CD is illigal because it's robbery. Those are two quite different kinds of infringements, with quite diferent penalties for the infractors.
But this isn't the worse that you can read there:

Burning CD’s from peer-to-peer networks like KaZaA, Morpheus or Gnutella is against the law.

This is deadly false. If you download a Merankorii's CD from a P2P network and burn it, you're not commiting an illegality but making the artist more known, which he likes (and I assure it to you, since Merankorii is my musical project). OK, Merankorii's songs aren't copyrighted, so here's another example. In the same way, if you download from a P2P network this CD, which is copyrighted, you're doing what they want, and they'll enjoy it. OK, this time I didn't gave you music... So, you want copyrighted music? Well, if you download this copyrighted songs from ThanatoSchizO, or this copyrighted songs from Cranes from a P2P network and burn it, your're NOT DOING ANYTHING WRONG.

They say

The rules are very simple. Unless you own the copyright, it’s not yours to distribute.

But I say: "You're full of bullshit and lying in an attemp to cause fear on music consumers, which should be what you wanted to treat well and not decieve, if you want them as your clients."

And I could say all this directly to them, but they're surely afraid of people like me, since they don't have their e-mail address on the website. Well, they would probably lie about it too, so...

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