I’ve been quite public about my distaste for the RIAA and its pathetic methods. I’ve called for people to stop buying CDs of artists who belong to the RIAA in hopes we can avoid giving those litigious vipers anything more to fuel their anti-entrepreneurial crusade, but you may ask yourself (as I did), “How do I know who’s with the enemy and who’s safe?” That’s an excellent question. With their roster changing regularly and new mini-labels popping up here and there, it seems impossible to know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. Enter the RIAA Radar. The RIAA Radar uses the Greasemonkey plugin for Firefox to index the item you are viewing on popular sites like Amazon.com against the RIAA membership list to indicate whether a CD is safe to buy or not. When viewing the artist’s purchase page, it displays a helpful message over the album picture to indicate whether this album is “clean” or not. If the artist is an RIAA member, the message is red (buying this album pays for your lawsuit at some point) or green (indicating profits from your purchase are unlikely to be used against you). I cannot express enough how important a tool like this is, or urge you enough to use it to make informed decisions. As such, these are explicit instructions on how to install and use it: 1> Go to the Greasemonkey for Mozilla homepage and install the plugin under Firefox 2> Restart your browser and install the RIAA Radar Greasemonkey script. 3> Restart your browser again and continue about your business. To test I went to Amazon and searched out Metallica, which predictably came up Red. I then searched for Skinny Puppy, which happily displayed Green. I encourage you all to contribute to the RIAA Radar site to support someone who did something good for us all.

I harp on this a lot, I know, but I think it’s important. Even the so-called “forward thinking” Obama administration does not seem to understand the technology that got it elected. According to Wired, the US government has decided to stand behind the draconian copyright penalties the RIAA continues to pursue against ordinary citizens, irrespective of the fact that the damages it claims are completely unverifiable and arbitrary. These organizations continue to suffer the consequences of their failure to understand the complex marketplace they find themselves in now and take out that failure on their consumers. Of course I won’t buy your damned CDs! You charge more than they are worth and your distribution model is irresponsible and excessive! I don’t need more STUFF in my apartment. I need more MUSIC. Instead of still trying to get $20 for a CD you don’t even need to market in print media or injection mold, why not pass some of those savings on to me?

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