Filtering -- RIAA's Kiss of Death by George Ziemann -- September 25, 2008 -- Another lobbying group has been formed, because if there's one thing we need at this moment in time, it's another lobbying group. Their goal is Internet filtering. I don't think it's possible, but I'm all for anything that blocks the RIAA's illegal music from being shared. This has been the RIAA's goal for about a decade now and it's an idea whose time has come, even if it's not technically possible. What a boon it would be to independents if the RIAA's music disappeared from P2P. What about the webcasters? If the RIAA's rates are killing them, wouldn't it be handy to screen out their songs and play something else? All of the copyright royalty agreements are not binding on independents. We were not parties to the agreements. We are free to compete by offering lower rates, which would be much easier if there was any sort of organization which represented independents as a group. Now the RIAA wants terrestrial broadcasters to pay royalties too, not satisfied with the savings incurred by being forced to stop paying the broadcasters for airplay. Radio might start looking for something more reasonably priced as well. Technically, it seems to me as if filtering could only be addressed going forward. In order to filter, there has to be a determining factor on which to decide whether or not to filter a song. And it has to be based on the content, not the format or protocol used to deliver it. The RIAA would have banned mp3. They now consider a 320k mp3 file to be "high quality." Beyond that, there's the simple fact that if filtering the Internet worked, porn wouldn't be so easy to find. Since the RIAA members seem to be the only ones proclaiming their own music to be illegal, they are going to have to embed into their songs some sort of identifier that the filters can spot, which I like to call the Mark of the Beast. So you use p2p and everything with the Mark gets blocked. Search Google for mp3s; files with the Mark are eliminated from the searches. No one shares their tunes, no one left to sue. In the spirit of "Know thy enemy," the RIAA's persistence in the pursuit of filtering seems misguided. I think they truly believe it will increase sales if college kids can't listen to their tunes for free. The college kids still won't have any money. Seems like they'd migrate to indie music, which is usually free and very fashionable right now, even if no one seems to understand the meaning of the word "indie." Unless the RIAA has a long-term vision (doubtful, in and of itself) of a future date when they reverse themselves and files with the Mark are suddenly the only ones allowed through the filters, this seems like an idea that, if fulfilled, has the most potential for shutting the RIAA up forever, if they survive the consequences. A working filter system would put the RIAA's beliefs to the ultimate test. If they're wrong (and they are), it'll finish them off. They'll have nothing left to blame except their inability to identify talent and failure to invest in developing the artists they had in favor of suing their target demographic. By the time they accept the truth, it'll be too late. It's probably already too late, so I'm glad to see the industry continue to waste time and money chasing their demise instead of worrying about improving the content that they so ferociously are trying to "protect."