I call this a continuous serious effort to undermine democracy, and its the same every year, same old faces some old handouts in return for sponsoring anti-consumer legislation.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080421-riaa-spent-2-million-lobbying-for-tougher-ip-laws-in-2007.htmlThese days, the Recording Industry Association of America is arguably best known for its legal campaign against P2P users—filing over 25,000 copyright infringement lawsuits in a few short years will do that, I guess. But as a music industry trade group, the group has several other responsibilities. One of those is lobbying Congress for tougher copyright laws, an endeavor that the group spent nearly $2.1 million on in 2007.
Each year, groups that lobby Congress are required to report on how much they spent convincing lawmakers to pass legislation. During 2007, the RIAA spent $2.08 million lobbing Congress on three pieces of legislation near and dear to its heart: The PRO-IP Act, the Intellectual Property Enforcement Act, college funding bill The College Opportunity and Affordability Act, and legislation relating to royalties paid by terrestrial and Internet broadcasters.
Call me stupid but how exactly was this money spent and on what, that's an awful lot of free lunches there and we must not forget the promise of a comfortable job after leaving government employ as a serious "consideration" to acting in a biased way against the populaces best interests.
One mistaken aspect of the ars report is the fictitious amount of users sued, the real figure is a small handful the rest are people who have been
threatened with a lawsuit, no lawsuit was filed in 98% of these cases, you have to wonder how a big news site like that can peddle propaganda so easily without checking their facts :roll:
