"Suburbanites have been stealing from Hip Hop culture for decades. If European companies can sue BlackBerry for SMS, then we need some of that money too!" RIAA (Reparations Is All Around) President 2Poppa Cap Inya said Thursday.

RIAA represents members of the hip hop community, claiming that the entire short message craze was started, developed, and distributed by Hip Hop artists. The organization is filing suit, seeking compensation from both the commercial purveyors of infringing intellectual property and from "wanksters and wannabe hustlers" using their cultural communications trend without permission through the infringing networks. RIAA has patents pending with the EU.

According to Mr Inya, most of the short message language now adopted by the growing, mostly affluent two-way and PDA phone carrying customer based, was directly copied from original intellectual property he claims is property of the Hip Hop community.

Encouraged by a recent court move to bolster NTP's patent action against BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, Ltd., Mr. Inya claimed: “Like, emoticons! I mean, :) for a smiley face is stolen straight from hieroglyphics, a language created by the original Hip Hop community. Just cause it's old school don't mean you can steal it. We're not just going after kids on two-ways but Instant Messengers as well!”

The idea is to duplicate the success media companies have had suing people who illegally download music. The group intends to launch a campaign to use a Sony style DRM technology to collect all infringing IM and SMS messages, to use as evidence in litigation.

The issue at hand is that the companies and users have taken prior work, whether it be patented software ideas or culturally specific language syntax and manufactured a commercially successful set of products and environments that would have otherwise been worthless, the law suits claim.

On the subject of taking other's original material and incorporating it in lucrative products, RIAA member P. Diddy had no comment.

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