A few months ago, the Swedish Antipiratbyr?•n (literally: Anti Pirate Bureau, hereafter called APB) raided an ISP, Bahnhof, looked through logs and in turn started looking through the hard drives of alleged “illegal uploaders”. Brilliant, right? Entirely within their rights, right? No. Despite their name, APB is a privately run organization. They have absolutely no right to do what they did.
Today, the US court system has decided that the FCC Broadcast Flag - basically a small yes/no ‘flag’ sent with broadcasted television may be recorded or not using a personal video recorder of any kind - is not something that FCC could legally instate.
For decades, and in the current decade especially, entertainment trade organizations have more or less decided to treat their customers as dirt. You’re not a respected customer anymore, you’re guilty until proven innocent. Imagine having to call your local dealer and beg for him to remotely open the car door if you wanted to drive your own car on wednesdays. Digital Rights Management is taking its grip on downloadable media, and is in ways more restrictive than the car example just mentioned.
We don’t owe anything to artists or entertainers. They’re in the market to please us, not the other way around. And we certainly don’t own anything to label behemoths or trade organizations. They know it, and they also know that their lack of an agile and slick organization, and complete inability to sign contracts that don’t screw over the artists is holding customers back and raising prices. Who’s being sued? The customers. For not giving these people money.