RIAA: Out of Control.

Hopefully, such high-profile outrages as the $220,000 fine levied against a Minnesota woman for “infringement” will ignite the necessary backlash to rein in the RI/MPAA. All the salient points are nailed in this piece by Declan McCullagh at CNET:

After decades of special-interest lobbying by large holders of intellectual property rights, U.S. copyright law has spiraled out of control. It’s been transformed from limited protections of authors’ rights for 14 years to a juggernaut with criminal enforcement, sky-high penalties, and up to 120 years of legal protection.

Copyright no longer abides by the fundamental principle of law, which is that the damages awarded should be related to any harm committed.

“It doesn’t strike a regular person that by passing a CD around the neighborhood, they should have their house taken away,” says Lew Rockwell, president of the free-market Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. “And by electronic means it shouldn’t be any different.”

The technical term for this is “rent-seeking,” meaning special-interest coalitions who pressure the government to transfer wealth to them. The general public (reasonably) can’t keep track of the minutiae of proposals to expand copyright law, but RIAA lobbyists can devote 100 percent of their time to the job. What happens is that copyright law continues to clamp down on Americans, inexorably, like a ratchet.