¨There is a new form of music piracy running rampant around the world, and your children could be involved placing you at risk of legal persecution¨ – the recording industry association of America (RIAA) warned parents to keep watch of their children´s activities in order to curb this new form of theft, stating ¨we will not hesitate to use the full power of the law to punish those who steal our intelectual property and parents will be held accountable for the actions of their children.¨
The RIAA´s South-African counterpart ASAMI echoed these thoughts.
Explaining the details of the crime in a press release, the RIAA stated that this new form of piracy goes beyond digital media exploiting an innate bug in the way music is heard to make copies into the human brain itself.
¨Basically, when you remember something, your brain has made a copy of it. Copyright prohibits copying anything without our consent and ergo, this is a crime.¨
The RIAA fears that there have been untold lost CD sales already due to people stealing music in this manner (coloqially known as ¨remembering¨). What is worse says the release, is that often people will remember a song they hear on the radio or television or at a friends house, and then decide they don´t like it – costing the artists a sale they would have had, had the person not remembered how bad the song was.
On top of this memory inately allows music to be utilized in other illegal ways including derivative works (known in the vernacular as ¨humming¨ a song).
While it is true that memory doesn´t always provide perfect quality copies, and people will often only remember parts of a song some people do in fact remember songs in their entirety, especially if they copy it to their brains multiple times as memory has the ability to fill in missing bits each time a song is received, the RIAA is frank about it all: Everytime somebody remembers a song, he is guilty of thef, and besides what about people with photographic memories ?
Appart from legal action against perpetrators, the RIAA is simultaneously pursuing legislative and techincal measures to curb the activity. A bill currently pending before the US congress will demand and extension of the CSSCA and DMCA protections to the human brain.
¨Basically if the bill passes, it will be legally required for all newly-made human babies to have genetic protection software installed which will prevent music from being remembered¨ said sponsoring congressman Geemee Cash.
On the technical front Sony-BMG is taking the lead with a new generation of CD copyprotection. A sony programmer who wishes to remain anonymous describes the system:
¨Essentially we are coating all new cd´s with a thin-layer of crystalized LSD, when heated by the CD-laser the LSD reverts to liquid and then to gass form, the listener then breaths it in, effectively destroying their abillity to remember the song they heard.¨
These moves however have not been without controvercy, a spokesman for the EFF responded by declaring that remembering music is an explicity allowed copyright exception under section 17 of the US copyright law, the fair-use statute and similiar laws internationally. The EFF went further to declare the RIAA´s plans for genetically preventing music-memory as a ¨gross invasion of privacy¨ stating that ¨how people choose to make new human beings is one of the most sacredly private matters in the law¨.
When asked about SONY/BMG´s proposed new LSD-layer copyprotection the EFF spokesman snorted and said ¨That´s just crazy, it´s even worse than that whole rootkit debacle – and besides it wouldn´t work ! The last time Japanese engineers mixed drugs and music we ended up with Kareoke !¨
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PS. This post is a parody… (I hope).