More Congress tips about music

Just to follow-up on my previous posting about tips for the new Congress, there’s a recent CNET article covering some of the same ground, making me think of two other areas to include.

1) RIAA lawsuits

When is this insanity going to stop? Why are they getting away with these horrible lawsuits? It’s because they’re targeting scapegoats who can’t afford to fight back. Any real legal challenge to these cowards would make their cases fall like a house of cards. Is Capitol Hill so far deep in the entertainment biz’s pockets that they can’t understand the idea of overkill for a problem. Oh that’s right… most of them signed off on the Iraq war though they later regretted it. Are they also comfortable with an already beleaguered legal system being tied up further with this shameless nonsense?

2) Digital Millennium Copyright Act

This needs to be overhauled radically. It’s some of the most over-used and abused legislation out there. It not only provides some of the “rationale” behind the RIAA suits but also supports the doomed idea of DRM (aka copy protection) that the labels have tried and failed at for years, leading to more and more frustrated customers who (not coincidentally) then turn to P2P services to freely download music without these stupid restrictions.