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The American crocodile that swallowed freedom

http://www.observer.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,480027,00.html

The American crocodile that swallowed freedom

John Naughton

Sunday April 29, 2001

The Observer

Appeasement, Winston Churchill said, is the policy of being nice to a crocodile in the hope that he will eat you last. Allow me to introduce a leading contemporary crocodile. It is called the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade body that represents the music recording companies.

The RIAA is obsessed with the supposed threat of the internet to its members' prosperity.

[...]

It's a Grade A scandal. A powerful, paranoid industry is claiming the right not only to censor what people publish in magazines or on T- shirts but to determine what scientists investigate and even what they will be allowed to publish. Sooner or later, free societies are going to have to rein in the pretensions and power of the RIAA. This crocodile must be stopped. Now.

john.naughton@observer.co.uk

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