It seems like the RIAA is unstoppable in its crusade to sue music lovers into oblivion. They are using the courts to get their way with ridiculous judgments being handed out. A single illegal downloaded song can cost a person thousands. The RIAA really does not want to go to trial; they hope to scare people into paying up when threatened with a lawsuit. Most people will just pay up to avoid the extra hassle of facing a trial. I am not advocating stealing music because I believe it is stealing when you take something without paying. However the music industry (not all artists… look what Radiohead did) is being bull headed instead of changing with the times. And these judgments are not punishment that fits the “crime” There is no way that a few songs should cost as much as they do in penalties. The question is what can we do to destroy the RIAA.
I don’t think trying to pass any laws will help because the lobbyists are more incentivized than voters. They make money to get laws passed or to prevent laws from being enacted. Voters are just regular people with jobs & real lives. We don’t have time to know every single detail of what to vote on and when to do so. It is a very difficult thing to make changes through the voting booth. Tough but not impossible I know. Maybe a better way is to wreck the chances of any jury awarding outrageous cash to the RIAA & other such scum based groups. One way to do that is FIJA (Fully Informed Jury Association). Basically the Constitution set up the average person to be the final branch of government. We the People are the final road block to oppressive government. If lawmakers pass bad laws which are ruled on by corrupt judges then the jury becomes 12 super powerful humans that can do good. FIJA looks to educate Americans on a jury’s role in trials. Now this not mainstream stuff & judges will actually throw people off juries if they are found to be members of FIJA. So it is not going to be something that the powers that be will endorse, but the Constitution is supposed to be the highest law in the land. The concept is that a juror can not only find a defendant not guilty based on the evidence but also based on the fact that the law is BAD. The jury is in control. No really, they are. No matter what the judge tells them to ignore or base their findings on, they have the final say. So if I were on a jury and I knew I could prevent a real injustice from happening I would think it was my duty to do the right thing. If the word could be spread about FIJA then juries everywhere could be used to do away with bad judgments like what the RIAA goes after. This is a big task I know but I see no other way because the RIAA will not stop until someone stops them over & over again.