"In one of RIAA’s high profile cases the Free Software Foundation backed defendant Joel Tenenbaum, much to the dislike of the music industry lobby. John Sullivan, Operations Manager at the FSF explains in a guest post why they think these cases impact not just music, but also free software and its technology..."

"As many of you know, a remarkable event took place the other day, when the technical community reached out its hand to the victims of the RIAA reign of terror, and the Free Software Foundation established a special fund to assist the victims of the RIAA's onslaught. I think this is a cataclysmic event in the history of the RIAA's litigation campaign.

A lawsuit recently filed against the RIAA asserts claims, under the "Computer Fraud and Abuse" and "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization" acts, detailing the RIAA's alleged use of "illegal and flawed" methods when investigating people for downloading or swapping copyrighted songs without paying for them.

"The Free Software Foundation has announced that it has established an Expert Witness Defense Fund to assist defendants in RIAA cases, in order "to help provide computer expert witnesses to combat RIAA's ongoing lawsuits, and to defend against the RIAA's attempt to redefine copyright law."

Contributions to the Fund are tax deductible and may be made at the following URL...

RIAA-fan Biden's influence in the Obama administration may be larger than anticipated, at least when it comes to file sharing: His good pals with RIAA and BSA connections keep getting Department of Justice's seats.

"Yesterday, while we were publishing our response to the RIAA's recent attack on the merit of organizations who represent the public's interest filing informative briefs in cases that threaten to negatively affect the public's interest, the RIAA was attacking us again.

Slashdot had this scoop, posted by xseedit: "The RIAA has moved their main Web site from IIS on Win2003 to Apache 2.2.3 on Red Hat. It appears that the move did not go smoothly as it resulted in an 8-hour downtime starting yesterday around noon, according to Netcraft. And the RIAA is still showing a 'temporarily under construction' page."

Another file-sharing defendant who says she has never installed or used file-sharing software is fighting back against the RIAA, accusing the music industry of waging war in the US court system to "shore up the American recording industry's failing business model."

"A Canadian study found that P2P music sharing leads people to buy more CDs — just the opposite of what the advocates of DRM claim..."