Consumer Advocacy/Anti-RIAA Groups

[bigbabydaddy1968]

Right...as I am sick of merely kvetching about the anti-consumer tactics of the RIAA and certain companies (Sony, (cr)Apple, etc.--I'm shakin' a certain body part your way) who push proprietary junk, DRM, malware, etc. onto otherwise reasonable and ethical consumers, I would like to know if there's a consumer advocacy group that lobbies on behalf of said consumers specifically against the RIAA and (evil) partners. I'm not talking about a general consumer group--is there a group that deals specifically with "fair use," DRM-related topics, etc.? If so, who are they and how can I join? If not, would there be interest in forming one? Or, would an online petiton be a better idea ATM?

And yes, I realize there are larger fish to fry, but this is an important issue in and of itself. While companies have huge financial warchests, the consumer has the votes. But it's meaningless unless we can form some sort of coalition.

Tryin' to Fight the Power,
BBD

[thequux]

There is the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation; http://eff.org); that may be what you're looking for. They provide, among other things, pro bono legal counsel to those who have been victimized by the DMCA and RIAA and similar.

Other than that, you probably couldn't do much better (at least in the US) by having everyone you know send a letter to their senator (a polite one, not along the lines of some of the later ones to Maximum PC) asking to fix the DMCA.

If you have enough people in enough places, that many letters would be difficult to ignore, to say the least.

For other countries, I don't know what the trick is, but with enough outcry, lawmakers would NEED to do something.

Maybe a thing like the "Miserable failure" thing on Google. (For those who don't know what I'm talking about, type "Miserable Failure" into google and click "I'm feeling Lucky") The way that that was done was that thousands of people with blogs posted a link "Miserable Failure" to the site that you get (I won't run it for anyone).

So, Let's all post this link on out blogs and get a bunch of cross links so Google falls into the trap.

The link is: Evil Bastards (http://www.riaa.com/default.asp)

[CptnObvious999]

EFF is as close to that as I know. They protect your digital rights on and off the web. However they are just a small group standing up to big bullies like Apple, Sony, Microsoft, etc. The more you can donate to them the better they have done a great job but need all the help they can get.