A file-sharing activist group has promised to send a brick of coal to the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America for every $100 donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, and Ipac.
"We wanted to make it clear to people that we thought, with what's happened this year with the lawsuits over file sharing, it was really important for people to give money to support organizations that were fighting for them, protecting their rights," Downhill Battle co-director Holmes Wilson told AVNOnline.com.
Wilson said in some ways 2004 was a good year for peer-to-peer file swapping, between many items on the music and movie industries' wish lists for fighting P2P not succeeding and "the rights of technology companies to make products without being sued by copyright holders.
"The RIAA and MPAA really failed to get anything they wanted in legislative sessions," he continued. "Except getting the government to pay the salary of a copyright czar."
Wilson said Downhill Battle has worked in the past with the EFF, Public Knowledge, and Ipac on similar issues. "We're just going to see what the scorecard is at the end of the month," Wilson said of the lumps-of-coal donation campaign, "and whatever (the groups) tell us they received, we'll divide by one hundred and put it into bricks of coal and sent to the RIAA and the MPAA."
He wouldn't speculate on how much money is likely to be raised by the campaign.
"I haven't kept totally up to date on traffic at (our) Website," he said, "but one day we got four thousand visitors, so whether people come to donate or maybe donate later when thinking about their taxes for next year, I couldn't put a number on it. But I think it'll help."
Wilson said the EFF, Public Knowledge, and Ipac have been very effective in thwarting the RIAA and MPAA legislative agenda. "Particularly Public Knowledge," he said. "But (all three) operate on a tiny budget compared to what the RIAA and MPAA get and give. These organizations don't have nearly the resources. Here's a case where every little bit helps."
New York-based Ipac may be the least well-known of the three groups, but they describe themselves as nonpartisan and aiming for "balanced" intellectual property policy and law.
"We believe that technological innovation and individual creativity are vital to the future of this country," the group says in a statement on their Web site. "We believe that a prosperous and democratic society depends on freedom for all individuals to pursue scientific invention and artistic expression. Unfortunately, new intellectual property laws threaten to stifle these freedoms and restrict public participation in science, art, and political discourse.
Public Knowledge, a slightly more visible digital rights interest group based in Washington, most recently weighed in on the Supreme Court's decision to hear the movie industry's case against Grokster and Morpheus in March 2005, after lower federal courts held the two P2P networks could not be held liable for their users' infringing activities because the networks maintain no file databases.
“While we are disappointed that the Court has taken the case, we believe strongly that at the end of the day, the 1984 Sony Betamax doctrine, which has done so much to promote technological innovation to improve the lives of consumers, will be reaffirmed," said Public Knowledge president Gigi B. Sohn in a statement earlier this month.
"The big content companies are trying to accomplish in this case what they have failed to do in the 20 years since Betamax, and what they have failed this year to accomplish in Congress – to put restrictions on new technologies that suit their purposes not the needs of consumers."
San Francisco-based EFF has represented Morpheus parent StreamCast in the case.
