RIAA and Patents

The recording industry’s complaints against alleged music downloaders are just the tip of the iceberg in legal threats against online activity. In the five years of the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, we have seen thousands of legal threats, with claims including trademark infringement, defamation, and copyright infringement. This seminar will discuss some of the range of complaints, both unwarranted and justified, and describe ChillingEffects.org’s resources for those trying to evaluate legal threats. In some cases, the web’s sunlight can help to melt meritless threats.

In this free January 23 EDUCAUSE LIVE! seminar, Legal Threats, Chilling Effects, and Warming the Air, presenter Wendy Seltzer, Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and Visiting Professor, Northeastern University School of Law, will discuss these threats and how to evaluate them.

The RIAA have proposed a legislative draft for a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, on the topic "Content Protection in the Digital Age: The Broadcast Flag, High-Definition Radio, and the Analog Hole," on November 3rd. To quote the EFF the effect of the legislation would be to:

[...] take one of the most basic and ubiquitous components in multimedia, and encase it within a pile of legally-enforced, complex, and patented proprietary technology - forever.

Coverage from: public knowledge.org and eff.org.

Amazingly, not even RIAA.com appears to have positive coverage of this at the time of writing. If anyone finds any material justify this, I'd really be interested.