Source: Copyleft
June 30th 2003
In response to the continuing legal attacks by the RIAA and major record labels on internet music sharing, which now include both criminal charges and civil suits against individuals, musicians are joining together to say NO to the action supposedly being taken on our behalf.
Just because the major labels haven’t figured out a way to make money out of the internet doesn’t mean that individuals who have shared music should go to prison, or be forced into bankruptcy. The industry is alienating the very people it hopes to sell music to in future with its heavy handed action.
With its collective failure to understand the internet, or the benefit it derives from the peer to peer networks that have sprung up in the vacuum created by that failure, the industry has now turned to desperate methods. Suing your customers one by one is not a business model.
We can only assume that the intention behind these attacks on
individuals is to create an atmosphere of intimidation in which
music lovers dare not use legally acquired computers to listen to music, except under very limited terms that the industry intends to dictate.
As musicians we recognise and defend the right of artists to be
compensated for their work. However, these prosecutions are not
helping musicians, or helping the industry create a better system of internet distribution.
We ask that the RIAA refrain from assuming our implicit support for their persecution of individual music lovers, stop equating all free online music with ‘piracy’, and concentrate its legal sanctions on the organisations who are making money out of the unauthorised duplication of our work.
We invite all musicians who support our position to add their names to this open letter at http://www.copyleftmedia.org.uk/justsayno/
