US industry body the RIAA came in for some tough criticism from Democratic senator Ron Wyden at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco yesterday. He attacked the RIAA’s role in lobbying for the anti-piracy elements of the Protect IP Act. “Social media needs to understand what the threat is, the threat to innovation of some of these policies,” he said, according to The Register. “We’re going to have to fight back. This is a question of whether the content sector can use the government as club to go after the innovation sector and everything it represents.” Wyden went on to slate the Act itself. “This is a cluster bomb where you should be going in with a laser, and the collateral damage to innovation and freedom is huge.”
