70 Groups Tell Congress To Put The Brakes On Any Further Efforts To Expand IP

Certainly none of these oppressive regulations with all their side effects from censorship, loss of civil rights to medicine and industrial espionage would even be discussed if it wasn't for the music industry.

As we are constantly flooded with their products, let's have a look at how big that industry really is. The IFPI - their industry body - has just published global music sales at $16.2bn for 2011. Yes this is the industry as a whole and globally - not just one company. And it includes all digital music sales (strongly rising), subscriptions etc. With these revenues the global music industry as a whole does not even make it into the list of the 200 largest corporations.

Now what would you do when - for lack of a better example - the global Christmas Tree industry (was about the same size but due to recent effects of globalization has lost substantial revenues) would treat every citizen like a criminal, put up surveillance measures that would make every totalitarian state proud, put you or your children into prison with punishments similar to murderers, tries to extort fees from you / your children for minor offences that could make up the last 10 years of revenues of one of their mid-size member companies, and would ask everyone who buys a blank DVD/CD to pay them because you could actually save an image of a Christmas tree on it. Let alone all the gardeners that are really responsible that nobody wants to buy 10 Christmas trees every year for $100 each. Those really have to be hunted down.

This metaphor aside, if you look at these numbers ($16.2bn) that on a global scale are very small even for a single business to attract such attention (these are revenues not income), it becomes obvious that something is substantially wrong here latest when you look at the hundreds of millions of "lobby-money" paid in the U.S. alone.

Besides that I believe it is fair to say that the damages from such legislation for all citizens and other companies will most likely be on par with the $300bn damages recently calculated from excessive IP/Patent "usage". That is millions of jobs and the lives of millions of families.

Maybe it will help to tell your congressman that (s)he is selling the lives of thousands of people in your constituency for a dinner sponsored by a local shop in Hollywood. A small Christmas tree might also help ;)

(IFPI numbers at http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/23/global-music-sal... )

http://www.publicknowledge.org/files/Public_Knowledge-Intern...

I hope one day to see some politician convicted of conspiracy to destroy a national asset in exchange for bribes as a convicted botnet user who used it to ddos sites.