The recording industry heavyweights – the usual gang, including Vivendi, Sony, Bertelsmann and Warner Bros – have now filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against a number of the major Internet service and network providers, including Sprint, AT&T, and UUNET. This time, they’re trying to get a court order compelling the ISPs to block access to a Chinese web site that allows folks to download music. Here’s an article about the lawsuit.
As always, The Register has its own pithy take on the situation:
“They’ve sued Napster and Scour into submission; realizing that this is expensive, they’ve bought numerous Congressional lapdogs to force the DoJ to become their personal ‘Copyright 911’ so that challenges to their production and distribution monopoly can be hounded down and eliminated at the taxpayer’s expense rather than their own; they’ve lobbied Congress to impose DRM controls on virtually all media and virtually all devices, including your computer; and now, for a final assault on human dignity, the Recording Industry Ass. of America has sued for the right to determine which Web sites you and I will be permitted to visit.
“Taking a page from the book of totalitarian regimes, the media industry is suing major ISPs, demanding that the foundations of a Chinese-style Great Firewall be laid to protect their precious copyrights, Reuters reports. . . .
“Of course the Listen4ever site has already moved. Thus it will be necessary to chase it down and amend the complaint. And if one site is banned, then any number of sites can be. And that, more than anything, is the power the RIAA is salivating over. Call this a test case. If it succeeds, the door will be opened for continuing and capricious Internet censorship by an international communications cartel.”
