What Do the Obamessiah and the RIAA have in common?

(Entry edited at 18:14hrs on 28-AUG-2008 to correct spelling of lawsuits.)

First, a link to the article:  http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0808/Obama_camp_Prosecute_Simmons.html

"It's worth noting that this isn't the first time Bauer has called for criminal investigations and prosecutions into the donors to independent groups critical of Obama, including one supporting John Edwards and another supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton. His words did have the effect of scaring their donors and consultants, but haven't yet appeared to result in any prosecution." (emphasis added)

Great.  Instead of launching your own advert putting out your side of the facts, lets shut up our detractors!  Let's sue 'em into the ground!  Do you think you're the RIAA now?  Remember (and this is off on a tangent, I know) when the RIAA said they were launching their lawsuits so that the artists would get fair compensation?  From Wikipedia: 

"In 1999, Stanley M. Glazier, a Congressional staff attorney, inserted, without public notice or comment, substantive language into the final markup of a "technical corrections" section of copyright legislation, classifying many music recordings as "works made for hire," thereby stripping artists of their copyright interests and transferring those interests to their record labels.[15] Shortly afterwards, Glazier was hired as Senior Vice President of Government Relations and Legislative Counsel for the RIAA, which vigorously defended the change when it came to light. The battle over the disputed provision led to the formation of the Recording Artists' Coalition, which successfully lobbied for repeal of the change." (emphasis added)

Here's a link to that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riaa#Efforts_against_copyright_infringement

But it gets worse:  "In February 2008 it became known that the RIAA has been withholding roughly $400 million from artists for several years now. The RIAA gained the money through lawsuits claiming to defend the rights of artists, although none of the artists whose music was 'illegally' downloaded have received any of the settlement money.[49]" (emphasis added)

The link to THAT article is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_group_efforts_against_file_sharing#Criticism

They've sued dead people, people without computers, even suggested that somebody attend a community college rather seek an advanced degree so that the person could afford to pay the "penalty."

OK...now that we know that the RIAA doesn't give a you-know-what about the artists, let's turn our attention back to the Obamessiah. 

I thought the Obamessiah had to at least get into office before he could start acting like a dictator. 

""Having failed in its attempts to get our legal, factual and fully-supported ad off the air, Barack Obama's campaign now wants to put our donors in prison for exercising their right to free speech," said Ed Martin, the group's president. "These over-the-top bullying tactics are reminiscent of the kind of censorship one would see in a Stalinist dictatorship, with the only difference being that those guys generally had to wait until they were in power to throw people who disagreed with them into jail." "

Again, from http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0808/Obama_camp_Prosecute_Simmons.html

Let's throw all politicians AND everybody at the RIAA into prison.