Well, I just went to answer my own question, by checking out what the RIAA had to say on their web site.

Looking at their propaganda makes me laugh.

The RIAA, in and of themselves, has no actual power. As I suspected, they work as representatives of the record companies who are members of their association. They influence the music business in several ways:

1) Proposing standards for publication, distribution, and copy protection.
2) Lobbying with US legislators to get laws introduced which protect the interests of their member companies.
3) Representing their member companies in lawsuits to enforce the laws created by #2, above.
4) Working with law enforcement officers to coordinate raids on pirates.

Now, if you look at these closely, you'll see why I say they have no real power. #1 is only useful to companies that participate in their standards. They can't touch MP3 because it doesn't follow any standards they've set. #2 is still protected by the US voter. They can only introduce the legislation- it takes actual lawmakers and voters to turn the bills into laws. #3 should just be a case of enforcement, but they've occasionally used it to throw their weight around without actually being able to affect anything (such as the failed attempt to stop the production of the Rio). And #4 is just finger-pointing an whistle-blowing. They don't have the power to arrest a pirate-- It still takes law enforcement officers to do that, and that, in turn, requires that someone break the law first.

When reading through the stuff at their web site, you realize it's full of scary language designed to make you think that they have a lot of control. But the truth is that they can't do anything about MP3 hardware or the MP3 format, because those things are not controlled by companies which are members of their organization. The only thing they can do is to try to stop illegal distribution of MP3 recordings by their member artists, as in this suit. But even then, when you read that page, you see it's full of doublespeak and half-truths. They tried to put in a section about the artists denouncing the Napster site, and could only get an actual direct quote from one artist. Even the "puffy" artist quote is taken out of context and is not a direct reference to Napster.

Personally, I don't see how the RIAA could have anything at all to say about bidirectional transfers on the Empeg. That's a hardware issue, and as the Rio thing proved, they don't have anything to say about that. The Rio issue was overturned because it's not a digital audio recording device. Neither is the Empeg.

Hugo... your thoughts?

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144