To be perfectly honest, I could care less about any letters. It might be a good idea to follow in the footsteps of Informationwave and just take action. <CLARKE> -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]On Behalf Of Sean Donelan Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2002 8:20 PM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: $12,000 per person registration fee (was RE: Eat this RIAA) On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Nigel Clarke wrote:
However, this type of action might not be necessary at all.
Some of the users on this list think RIAA's recent actions are nothing more than empty threats. Why doesn't NANOG make a few of its own?
A "polite" letter from a NANOG representative should do the trick.
The RIAA's annual budget is roughly $18 million. That pays for lawyers and other stuff which goes into writing "polite" letters. To raise that much money Merit would need to charge about $12,000 per person per NANOG meeting. People complain the current $300 registration fee is too much. NANOG is not a lobbying organization. There are other several organizations (and mailing lists) you may want to consider instead, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation http://www.eff.org/ You can also write your elected representatives for the price of a postage stamp. Some congress critters even accept e-mail now.