The Peer-to-Peer Legal Defense Fund

Downhill Battle is very proud to announce the Peer-to-Peer Legal Defense Fund. The fund was created to support the families and individuals that have been sued by the record companies and to help fight the RIAA suits. The Defense Fund’s contribution system runs on a peer-to-peer model: rather than collecting contributions centrally and later distributing them, donors give directly to a family or individual that’s been sued. Our open source software tracks donations and rotates the name that appears in the contribution box so that the person with the lowest contributions so far is presented to potential donors. Over time, contributions are distributed evenly without the need for a middleman.

We hope you’ll join the fight against the RIAA lawsuits by making a contribution to one of the people who’s been sued.

Here’s a quote from a message we received this morning. It illustrates once again how difficult these suits are for the people that have been targeted.

“My husband and I both work full time to make ends meet. We have 4
children: one in college, one in high school, one in middle school, and
one in grade school. We are middle class and live from paycheck to
paycheck. We are good, honest people. This lawsuit has devastated us. We
have had to hire a lawyer to answer this lawsuit. We do not have the
financial or emotional resources to fight this, and we can only hope that
we settle this quickly and not too painfully.”

Remember, the lawsuits are the bad news, but music is always the good news. Fujichia Records, our favorite label, is still making beautiful websites, music, and more: Cool Breeze MP3 and Jacob Berendes MP3

p.s. If anyone would like to make a flyer for the Defense Fund, that would be great. We’re thinking of a quarter-pager that people could hand out a concerts and other events. Don’t forget to remind people not to buy major label CDs!