Re RIAA: I agree. I'm no fan. But what I said was that the point of trade organizations was to ensure collective rights while avoiding collusion. That is the P

Re RIAA: I agree. I'm no fan. But what I said was that the point of trade organizations was to ensure collective rights while avoiding collusion. That is the POINT, that isn't what they always do. Sometimes they just hide collusion under the guise of avoiding it: hence lobbying. Also any time you have an organization speaking for many, there are never any "clean" records. IEEE, IETF, ACM all have had their controversies.