While not quite TSA level abusers, the Recording Industry Association of America stands tall among private trade associations for having been handed tin shields by Congress to play music police, beating up on nasty boys and girls across the nation.  Not impressed? Has Congress given you vast powers to play private cop lately?

Lately, we haven’t heard of any egregious sucking the tears of crying children, while copyright schemer Righthaven, trolling the interwebz in search of people using indefinite pronouns to which it claimed ownership, has turned the RIAA’s righteous witch hunt into a travesty. 

Righthaven, you may recall, got slammed with legal fees owed to Marc Randazza, and when it failed to pony up for a bond to stay execution,  the cavalry was called in to seize its assets.  If you happen to notice the excessive use of adjectives at The Legal Satyricon, now you know why.

Who was this upstart, this troll without so much as a tin badge from Congress, making a mockery of fair use litigation, the RIAA demanded to know?  Aarrgghh. They’re going to screw it all up, and now they’re so broke they can’t afford a mocha frappucino.  This will never do, so into the breach rides the Saviors of the Song to defend the right to suck blood from babies on the internet, as Congress meant them to do.

A demure request was sent off to Randazza from an unassuming young lawyer out of the Washington, Matthew Williams, who honed his skills editing the 2006 American University gender journal, where nary a stray masculine word appeared.  In dulcet tones, he politely inquired whether Randazza would have any problem if his client, the RIAA, just happened to slide some papers under the appellate court’s door as a friend of the court.

Not a partisan amicus, mind you. No, no. Nothing so aggressive. Just a neutral amicus. You know, friend to all, just the voice of fairness, of justice.

You see, the RIAA couldn’t care less whether Randazza bankrupted Righthaven and sucked the marrow from its bones. Good riddance, interloper.  But the crushing decision, where the court not only held Righthaven to have no standing, but held the use of its false-claimed copyright to be fair. “Fair use,” two words that sound like fingernails on a chalkboard to the RIAA, like curses of the harshest tone.  Oh no, something so important cannot be left to a troll like Righthaven to screw up.  And so the neutral RIAA has come to clean up the mess, let Randazza get his money but undo the damage left in Righthaven’s wake.

Randazza was not fooled by Williams’ baby face and kindly offer.  In a letter,