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Why the USA can't call in the RIAA

The US government has a problem, a big problem.

Some little Aussie upstart by the name of Julian is telling all their secrets to an eager world.

He's dumped hundreds of thousands of supposedly confidential communiques onto the internet and the US administration seem powerless to stop him.

Sure, they've exerted pressure on the likes of PayPal and MasterCard in an attempt to choke off the supply of money. They've recruited the patriotic support of Amazon to throw him out of their cloud, and they've even managed to coerce the English and Swedish authorities into arresting him on some allegations of sexual offending.

But so far, all this has proven is that the US government is completely incapable of reigning in the actions of Mr Assange and the Wikileaks organisation.

I think it's time they called in the big guns.

And, when you consider how many people have been hung, drawn and quartered by the US justice system for allegedly downloading the occasional $1 music track, I think we know exactly who to call.

The RIAA/MPAA consortium has been able to achieve things that nobody else in the world has.

They've been able to accuse people of crimes and then, with little more than anecdotal evidence, have those people hit with astoundingly high fines and penalties which far exceed the seriousness of their alleged crimes.

Surely, if they put the RIAA/MPAA in charge of handling the thorny issue of Assange, he'd already be rendered powerless and enjoying a little waterboarding in an off-shore US prison somewhere.

I mean, just look at this case and you'll see what I mean.

The recording and movie industry has managed to extract such incredible protection from the US government that it is surely now the most powerful "anti-evil" force in the land and thus, the perfect group to scuttle Assange's attempts to release material that must surely be *copyrighted*, by dint of having already been published to a select few within government.

But, therein lies a problem for the USA.

Apparently, "works" created by the US Federal Government, or arms thereof, do not enjoy domestic copyright protection.

This actually makes sense. After all, if a work is something that has effectively been paid for by taxpayers then those taxpayers should not be charged again to access it -- as copyright protection would allow.

Perhaps this explains why the US government hasn't (or can't) bring the heavy hand of copyright law to bear on Wikileaks and must, instead, rely on the kind of dirty-dealing that I am already very familiar with when it comes to governments (US and NZ included) trying to suppress embarrassing people or information.

How will the Wikileaks saga eventually end?

I do not know -- but I strongly suspect it won't end well for Mr Assange.

He's already in custody and odds are he'll be extradited to Sweden where, if the sexual offending allegations fall over, he'll be further extradited to the USA to face charges under some obscure piece of legislation -- probably an anti-terror law.

From there -- who knows?

All the cyber-attacks against MasterCard and other complicit organisations won't make a jot of difference. As I suggested yesterday, even Wikileak's trump-card (their insurance file) won't stop the US from pursuing their ultimate goal of "silencing" Assange.

I bet he now wishes he'd simply illegally downloaded a few movies instead of sharing the USA's most embarrassing secrets.

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