Podcast: RIAA/Pirate Party Reach Consensus and Pigs Fly

The Record Industry Association of America (RIAA), one of the most cartoonishly virulent anti-pirate organizations in America, couldn't possibly find a common ground of agreement with the Pirate Party, could they? Afterall, the RIAA were the masterminds behind some of the most bullheaded, shortsighted lawsuits against individual Americans that have been seen in the Copyright Wars so far. Jammie Thomas (now Thomas-Rasset) ended up losing a courtcase to the RIAA over the small matter of sharing 24 songs via Kazaa. The mother of four was ordered to pay a whopping $1.92 million in "damages" for partaking of those two dozen songs. Joel Tenenbaum faced off with the RIAA over a handful of songs, lost his fight, and was hit with a $675,000 penalty. The RIAA says its taking a principled, no nonsense stand against criminals- the Pirate Party says they're just alienating their customer base by punishing them for using everyday technology to enjoy music. Both the music fan and the music industry would be better served if the RIAA pulled its head out of the sand and figured out what business models work in the current techno-economic landscape.

So what would the Pirate Party have in common with a bully like the RIAA? Well, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) did a little piece on Orphan Works legislation that is a bit of copyright reform that everyone can agree on. What's an "orphan work"? An orphan work is material which is subject to copyright rules but for which the holder of the copyright can no longer be located. There's more of this orphaned work floating around than you might imagine; and the conundrum for individuals and organizations that would like to reuse and recycle this material is whether this can be safely done, or whether the copyright holder is going to come out of the woodwork years later and claim damages. What the Orphan Works legislation aims to do is come up with legal guidelines which everyone can play by in order to release quality pictures, photos, all sorts of creative materials, back into the public domain, while still performing the due diligence to preserve the rights and privilege of authorship. It's common sense legislation that's win-win for authors and the public alike.

This podcast summarizes the work done on the legislation as of 2008. Updates indicate that the Orphan Works bill is currently being held up in Washington gridlock. But with such a broad coalition of support undergirding the bill, passage seems like a no brainer. Washington couldn't possibly screw this one up, could they? If anyone has new info on this, comment below!