Techfocus ran an interview with EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) spokesman Fred Von Lohmann, and it was good stuff - so good, in fact, that the RIAA decided to use parts of it to 'support' a few of their own contentions in a June 25 Washington Post story.

The interview material was taken out of context. But if you're the RIAA, that's OK.

"The RIAA today also released documents showing that its critics have expressed support for tracking down individual pirates," the story in question reads.

"One document quoted Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) attorney Fred von Lohmann as saying: the Copyright Act, like most of our laws, has been built on the premise that you go after the guy who actually breaks the law.'

"Von Lohmann said he stands by the quote, which came from an interview earlier this year with Techfocus.org, though he added that the RIAA's decision is misguided."

Techfocus' Bill Royle told us, "Considering that we're a low-budget site, the traffic which resulted from their usage of our work required us to take additional steps to manage the burst. As well, because of their manner of reprinting, some viewers were mistakenly led to believe that we supported their efforts, which we categorically do not."

Thus, "Effective immediately, the RIAA and MPAA will need to find another way to get to Techfocus," it says in a notice here. "In response to their legal targeting of individual file-swappers, access from their known networks to this site has now been blocked. While it may still be possible for them to access Techfocus via address ranges which we're not aware of, they'll otherwise have to use non-RIAA and non-MPAA networks to view the site."

It also says, "In a perfect world this wouldn't be an act we'd want to take - but we've had it with the RIAA and MPAA. Their contribution to the internet is stifling programming creativity (see the DMCA, etc), and they are acting in bad faith. As such, they can find their opposition information elsewhere."

There's a lot more, and also a neat This site blocks the RIAA/MPAA button.

"Essentially, we're using a simple .htaccess file with networks known to be RIAA and MPAA, and we would be happy to provide it to other webmasters," said Bill. "There are undoubtedly better ways to block them (such as iptables adjustments), but it's a step in the right direction.

"I'd like to urge other webmasters to consider doing the same to protest their efforts and actions on the internet and in the courts."

Go here for the blocking file.

In the meanwhile, it's been downloaded more than 1,000 times in the past two days and from referrer logs, the site's been visited by the New York Times, Washington Post, C|net, Wall Street Journal and the US Department of Justice.

"I'm getting about 50 emails a day on it right now," Bill says.

What about the RIAA? No response, least of all an apology.