This will be a brief post because I’ve never been good at writing politically and because I’m busy with school right now. The popular tech news site Gizmodo last week declared that the month of March would be a good time to boycott the RIAA (others have firmer views) and I couldn’t agree more. While the RIAA has no direct control over Canadian policy, it is still powerful and has a Canadian counterpart with similar goals. Not only do they impinge on the freedoms of their customers, but they also exploit the talent of musicians to increase their profit margins. All in all, they’re evil as fuck and, if you can, you should avoid them like the plague for at least one month. This is a heavy task for the music lovers out there as almost every large distributer has RIAA affilitations but be vigilant and don’t give in. If you go to a concert, buy merch; it doesn’t feed the coffers of the RIAA so it supports bands you love without supporting their draconian masters. For those willing to take the challenge, the site RIAA Radar provides a useful database to determine if an album you are interested in buying has been released by the RIAA. Use it for all musical purchases and if you want to attack the MPAA at the same time, avoid those same company’s video releases as well. Support our freedoms and boycott the RIAA this month.