Re:From a Mainer's perspective... (Score 1)

I agree. The RIAA are not protecting rights, they are protecting a business model for their members. These are two very different things. If you will review the Declaration of Independence and the early Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, the concept of rights that informs them is very different than that which underlies the RIAA's tactics. The early documents see rights as inherent in individuals, and that these individual rights must be defended against government's inevitable grasp for more power over the individual.

In contrast, the RIAA depends on a theory of rights which sees government as the grantor or creator of rights, which have no existence apart from government fiat. The intellectual property assertions held to be rights according to the RIAA have been created by the legislative process. They do not inhere in individuals nor do they proceed from any transcendent principle or universal convention, but are artificial creations of content producers, who are trying to sustain a business model.

The tactics of the RIAA are tantamount to buggy whip manufacturers lobbying Congress to make the manufacture and sale of automobiles illegal so as to protect their business model. Surely the analogy is far from perfect, but hopefully it is illustrative.