RIAA chief proposes copyright filters for installation on private property
Friday, February 8th, 2008Well aren’t I the prescient one? I’ve been saying to anyone who will listen that it’s only a matter of time before RIAA and its allies start pushing for this kind of measure and here it is, in all its glorious predictability. Cary Sherman, the head of the Recording Industry Association of America, thinks that installing copyright filters on privately owned computers is probably the way forward. That’s right, monitoring devices installed on private property, to prevent that property’s owner from violating copyright held by the Association’s members.
Is there any substantive difference between this and, say, the police demanding to install a listening device on each and every telephone and mobile handset in case their owners ever feel like talking about something illegal? Well, yes there is. The police force, at least here in the UK, is a reasonably accountable organization that is ultimately answerable to parliament. RIAA is neither of these. The police could at least claim that any such action was “in the public interest”, at least where particularly serious crime such as terrorism, kidnap, human trafficking, etc are concerned. I don’t think anyone could claim much moral equivalence between such matters and copyright violation.