RIAA Claims Music On Car Radios Meant Only For Original Vehicle Owner!!!!

What's up with this?

http://radio.about.com/library/weekly/aa082603a.htm

The Recording Industry Association of America announced today it would be expanding its crackdown on copyright infringement by suing family members, hitchhikers and carpoolers.

Lawyers for the RIAA maintain that the radio in each car was never meant to be listened to by anyone else except the original owner of the vehicle.

Therefore, any additional passengers who listen to music on the radio in another individual's car are doing so illegally and without the express permission of the copyright holders of the respective songs that are broadcast.

RIAA attorneys were preparing to go to Federal District courts across the country to have subpoenas issued to every car maker in America in the hopes of forcing them to disclose the names and addresses of all purchasers from the last 20 years.

"We think this is a no brainer," said an RIAA spokesperson who declined to be identified. "These drivers have been illegally sharing music on their radios and their passengers have been getting a free ride for way too long," he continued.

Legal representatives for the RIAA also warned that they would especially be targeting the "big fish" like charter bus drivers and RV owners who blatantly turn up the radio volume allowing others to hear.

In addition, RIAA lawyers said they were hoping to get a court order to exhume the bodies of Scottish physicist James Clerk-Maxwell, who developed the theory of electromagnetic waves and Guglielmo Marconi, who discovered and harnessed wireless radio in order to sue both corpses for unfair business practices.

- Corey Deitz