For those unaware, RIAA Radar was a tool that Ben Tesch wrote, that made it very easy to determine whether a certain piece of media was released by a RIAA member label, to assist with boycotting the RIAA. It worked by searching Amazon for the search term in question, and returning all CDs that met that search term, along with the label that published that CD, and a simple “safe”, “unknown”, or “warning” image based on whether the label was a RIAA member or not. Unfortunately, due to maintenance and hosting issues, he took it down.
However, I feel that such a service is still extremely useful today, and in fact, should be extended to other content industry organizations, such as the MPAA.
I’d like to resurrect the RIAA Radar, and extend it to the entire MAFIAA (and that doesn’t just mean the US-specific bodies, that means the whole world, where possible), as well as provide a platform to promote independent media. To that end, I’d be willing to pay for domain names and (depending on how much traffic this would get) hosting. In fact, I’ve purchased mafiaaexpo.sr, mafiaaexposr.com, and mafiaaexposr.org for this – I think MAFIAA Exposr is a kinda catchy name for this, and domains aren’t THAT expensive in the grand scheme of things, even if this doesn’t take off or I decide on a different name.
The problem with that is, I’m not really a developer, and wouldn’t know where to begin to develop a secure web app for this, nor any mobile apps that would be desirable. Therefore, I’m looking for someone (or multiple someones!) who have experience with web and/or mobile development, and would be willing to volunteer for the cause of helping to end the MAFIAA’s control of our culture. I’d ask that your code be released under an open source license of some sort, so that if this project were to ever come to a close, someone else could easily pick up where it left off. AGPL would likely be appropriate for the web portion of it, and something like BSD for a mobile app (if nothing else, because of Apple’s restrictions preventing GPL software). You would be fully credited, of course, and the code would remain your code.
Anyone interested in this project? Let me know in the comments, e-mail me at bhtooefr@bhtooefr.org, or hit me up on Twitter or G+. 🙂
I took over the riaaradar.com domain and am developing the site. If you’d like to help with the project, let me know, you seem to have some great ideas.
Sweet!
I’ll start working on populating the MusicBrainz to RIAA label mapping.
Looks like, for the MAFIAA side of things, there’s http://api.themoviedb.org/2.1/ to work from, maybe?
I AM THE HUMBLE MUSIC CONSUMER WHO PURCHASES ITUNES. I WOULD GLADLY CHANGE MY BUYING HABITS TO BENEFIT THE ARTISTS, BUT I DO NOT KNOW HOW.
I NEED A VAST LIBRARY, EZ ACCESS TO MUSIC, EZ WAY TO KNOW WHO ARE THE BAD GUYZ.
THANKS
Any update on this? I’m really struggling without RIAA Radar. Is there a way we can look this stuff up manually on a list or something, even?
The manual method is tedious, but you could look up the record on Amazon or MusicBrainz, look for the label, then look on RIAA’s member list: http://www.riaa.com/aboutus.php?content_selector=aboutus_members
Also, it’s worth checking the label’s ownership, in case they’re owned by someone on that list (although, IIRC, the RIAA is good about listing subsidiaries of their members, too).
The source of the RIAA radar website has been released into open source for quite a while. See https://github.com/frelsi/riaaradar for more info (or just fork your own) 😉
cu, w0lf.
That’s not the original project, for what it’s worth, that’s a project that Corey Farwell (who posted earlier in the comments on this post) started after getting the domain.
So, how are things going?
I haven’t done anything at all on this, been busy with too many other projects.
I think I let mafiaaexpo.sr expire, too, but kept the .com and .org.
I always loved RIAAradar and used it a lot. Would love to have it back for my record shopping trips. There’s not much I can do to help, but know that if you ever do choose to revive this project, there are folks out there would would use and appreciate it! 🙂