RIAA to Parents: Pay When They're Toddlers and Save the

[primexx]

* RIAA to Parents: Pay When They're Toddlers and Save the

Bother Later

The RIAA today sent a "settlement letter" to all parents of

children under 3 years old offering a toddler settlement rate

for online copyright infringement if they simply send payment

to major record labels before their children learn to read.

"Our goal is to make this easier for parents," said RIAA

President Cary Sherman. "Everyone knows that in this era of

increasing hard drive capacity and new digital media

technologies, it is inevitable that every child in America

will infringe copyright sooner or later. With our 'toddler

settlement' rate, parents can avoid those pesky lawsuits.

Consider it a way to invest your child's future."

The toddler settlement requires parents to log everything

their child ever does online and to make those logs available

to the RIAA at regular intervals. "It can just become a part

of every birthday celebration," added RIAA's counsel at Holme,

Roberts and Owen. "Blow out the candles and send your Internet

logs to Uncle RIAA!"

For this post:

<http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=556>

* American Travelers' "Risk Assessment" Score to Be Based on

Google PageRank

According to a joint announcement by the Department of

Homeland Security and search engine giant Google, Inc., today,

all citizens of the United States traveling across borders

will be given a risk rating, to be based on the overall

position of their homepage when Transportation Security

Administration (TSA) representatives type the name into the

popular search engine.

"Until now, we've been using an unduly complex metric to

deduce which innocent citizen will suddenly become

'interesting' to our agents during routine inspections," said

a TSA spokesperson. "Finally we thought, why not just find out

who everyone else thinks is 'interesting' instead?"

"You know, like, crowdsource it?" added a Google spokesperson

from a nearby office hammock.

The RankInSecurity rating will take values generated by

Google's patent algorithm and TSA's own unique data mining

methods to determine whether the traveler will pass through

security checkpoints unhindered, be obliged to "volunteer" for

further screening, or simply sent back home until their online

popularity improves.

When asked about the risks of scores being distorted by so-

called "Googlebombing," the TSA spokesman visibly blanched,

screamed for backup, and threw the questioner onto the floor.

Further calls to the TSA were not answered by press time.

For this post:

<http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=556>

If anyone wants more there's more stories from the same newsletter.

[RaisinCain]

Anyone getting busted for downloading music is an idiot. There are plenty of ways to get "free" music without getting into trouble. :ninja:

I sure hope this is a April Fool's prank. lol

[leesmithg]

This is a lame joke, the RIAA cannot stoop that low, or can they?

[primexx]

I suspected it was an april fools joke to begin with, then after I started reading I was like "That seems like something they would actually do..." Then I clicked on the link...