hits
So sue me
Yeah!! the madness goes on!
One of my last blog entries was on "The madness of the Recording Industry Associations".. that's a topic which usually makes me angry: It is soooo unfair, they're soooo greedy, and the government is so passive and permissive with them that I just can't believe it.
Well, this time there is both good news and funny news: the good news is that today the European Union started a process against all those "author societies" because they are becoming monopolies. :-)) eh! simply sweet, the first coherent thing in all this craziness.
The funny news comes from the SGAE, one of the biggest Spanish author societies. To put it in context, I have to mention that there is a huge movement (which I support) against these sort of societies. Every day there are more and more people talking about the madness, there are more people blogging about some crazy stuff they are doing, and more people who are realizing that they are paying taxes on blank CD's and DVD's they buy because they are regarded as "potential" thieves. I still can't believe I pay money to some awful singer when I burn an OpenSolaris CD. Does it make sense to you?!?
Anyway, the funny thing is that the president of the SGAE (or whatever he is in there), said this in an interview: ?Vamos a ir hasta el final. El que nos llame g?ngster, que busque un buen abogado? ("We won't give up, whoever calls us gangsters should look for a lawyer"). Woww!! I don't want to call them gangsters, but that quote would fit perfectly in an Al Capone film!! :-)
There is a good blog entry about it which cites a really interesting Coleone quote on this topic: "I don't need killers, what I need are lawyers". :-) There are so many people against the things they are doing, that it seems they want to silence them.
Well, I don't like the business they run, I don't like the methods they use (I'll sue you if you inform people about my shifty business), and of course I don't like having to pay tax to a private society (how can that be legal?!) for backing up my data, or testing the releases of OpenSolaris, Linux or whatever other Free Software bits.
BTW, the tax money they receive enables them to sue people like the Frikipedia guy. The SGAE has shut down the site because the guy who started it was afraid of their lawyers (he's a student, and he can't afford to get sued). So, it could be that the money they received from the last OpenSolaris CD I burned was used to sue a poor guy who wrote something they didn't like. Wonderful.
Having said that, the only thing that remains for me to do is to quote the famous:... So, sue me!!
