Slashdot Mirror
What The RIAA Gets Out Of File Sharing
ChrisPaget writes "Wired have a fascinating article about a company called BigChampagne which sells regional P2P download statistics to most of the major record labels. When the labels know what people are downloading, they know what to put on the radio, and sales in the area increase. The record industry's lawsuits against file- sharing companies hang on their assertion that the programs have no use other than to help infringe copyrights. If the labels acknowledge a legitimate use for P2P programs, it would undercut their case as well as their zero-tolerance stance."
There are certainly other benefits for the music industry from P2P sharing. For the artists, especially those who aren't part of the small handful of superstars who get massive marketing, it allows their music to be heard. Typically only a few songs by smaller artists are available via P2P, so if there if a downloader who likes the music, they must purchase a CD if they want to hear more. This theory is based only on my own experiences for a dozen or so smaller artists whom I "discovered" through Kazaa and then bought CDs for.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
My impression is the whole thing was a publicity stunt.
For the mother/child to go to the media in the morning, then settle that night? Like I said before, if they went to the press legitimately, it'd be because they felt the suit was unjust, and they'd be literally flooded with lawyers willing to take the case pro bono just for the publicity.
The whole thing makes absolutely no sense, except to get people to read the "I'm so sorry I hurt the artists I love - please kids dont do P2P!" message.
I wish I had the free time to investigate and show it for the scam it was. I bet you'd find that the mom works for the RIAA or local Tower records or some such shit.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Auto theft is already profitable for the auto industry. A car is stolen (and presumably chopped up for its parts) means the owner gets a fat cheque from his insurance to get - a NEW car from the auto maker. Why else are cars so easy to steal out from the factory with only a slim jim and perhaps a screwdriver? There is no business case for making cars harder to steal for the auto industry.
If the Major Lables start reacting to what the public is actualy listening to, instead of trying to convince people to buy a product thaey have produced.
The major problem with most music lables is that they have become manufacturers of music instead of distributers of music.
The RIAA at al. knows that P2P could become the next radio, and they know that p2p is not the real reason for bad music sales. But the RIAA is not really sueing people beceause of loss of sales, it's sueing beceause of loss of control over what people listen to. The RIAA loves radio for the very reason that they can control it (and actualy own it in some cases).
The RIAA/Lables can't "own" p2p or force it play what they want, so they choose to shut it down. I have always thought that the RIAA/lables have been more worried about loss of promotional/playlist control then profits.
Prior to P2P a label could promote the shit out of an artist/group with out them having to be any good, and still be SURE it was going to make a profit. Now the Major labels have to wait and see if the public actualy LIKES the music before it can make a profit.
Everyone... go download some Right Said Fred and Spice Girls. Let's see if we can get them back on the radio!
I did RTFA. (Read the Friendly article.)
Unless I misunderstood something, the picture I got was that they were relly looking at what people were searching for, not what people were downloading.
There was a description of a green screen of text scrolling by in a blur. BigWig asked if they could freeze the display. Tech drone froze the display. You could see searches, from certian IP addresses, for various phrases. Article remarked that a lot of people were also searching for pr0n.
I think all you would need is a bot to send reasonably frequent search requests for, say, Goatse, in order to get this onto the radio. In fact, by manipulating the network, such as gnutella or fasttrack, you could possibly arrange it such that your search requests mostly only ended up going to BigChampagne so as not to hog bandwidth of other filesharers.
Taken to its logical conclusion, a network of friendly bots, with a web driven front end would allow anyone in a certian zip code to request what they want on the radio.
Something with a very similar effect could be implemented with low tech. A radio station could have a telephone line to accept requests manually, and then such forward looking free thinking radio stations could actually play what people are asking for.
I don't know. Maybe such a far-out idea is just going way too far. After all, the article did say that their mantra was "We don't need no research, just play the f***ing song.", and they must know better than we what we want.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.