An amusing protest against the RIAA and DRM
Whatever you think about the RIAA and DRM (Digital Rights Management), you have to admit that there's something inherently funny about the idea of copyrighted, DRM-protected SILENCE. And that you could technically go to jail for five years for breaking the DRM on silence, God knows how many years for freely distributing said silence, and that's not counting lovely prosecutorial bonuses for "conspiracy to", since "conspiring" to do a naughty thing is an additional bonus crime on top of doing the naughty thing itself.
I present Scott Moschella's act of civil disobedience and creative irony: Breaking the Law
I present Scott Moschella's act of civil disobedience and creative irony: Breaking the Law
Comments
Originally posted by a_greer
I love this guy, I cannot wait for the RIAA to sue his ass and try to jail him. can you say marder for the cause!
I don't know. Can you spell martyr for the cause?
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ...23/uk.silence/
Originally posted by stupider...likeafox
I wouldn't feel so confident about this jape after reading about Mike Batt's troubles:
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ...23/uk.silence/
Someone can sue you because they don't like your haircut. The existence of a lawsuit and the merit of a lawsuit are often far from the same thing. Since the above Batt/Cage issue was never settled in court, we can't be sure what the outcome might have been, but I rather doubt a copyright on silence, pure and simple, would have been upheld.
Where Batt might possibly have run into trouble was having given Cage credit as a "co-author" for the silent track. Stupid that it is that such a gesture could make a difference, I suppose that credit gives the Cage estate some tiny claim on the work that they might be able to play up in court.
As for the case of Scott Moschella, I think he's prepared to find trouble. Whether or not he has given sufficiently serious thought to the possibility of doing jail time I can't say, but I would hazard to guess that he might look forward to engaging in a court battle on the subject. He's in television -- he's the line producer for "ScreenSavers" -- and he might figure that any publicity is good publicity.