Pew Study Says RIAA Tactics Are Working

Furd writes "The Pew Internet & American Life Project has posted a new data study that purports to show that the RIAA lawsuit strategy has successfully reduced P2P filesharing. While the presentation of the data is weak (poor graphics and weak statistics), the report does suggest that there has been a change in the usage of P2P tools."

Comments

Correlation does not equal causation

[Taboo]

1. 2003 has seen the biggest emergence of legitimate pay-per-song services to date.
2. The 4 p2p application listed in Pew's report (KaZaa, WinMX, BearShare and Grokster) will naturally lose marketshare due to the availablity of newer, more sophisticated applications.

Re:Correlation does not equal causation

[jdifool]

Hi,

you said everything that was needed. Well done.
But the question, now, is : why such a story is posted when this is self-evident than someone is going to refute the very content of the story ? Or is it just meant to allow us to put some more sarcasms to the RIAA ? I still wonder.
Nothing to see here, move along.

Regards,
jdif

Re:Correlation does not equal causation

[epiphani]

Just out of curiousity, short bittorrent - which requires a web-based torrent, what other 'more sophisticated' applications are you speaking of?

I'd also like to add number three to that list:

3. December is also a very busy time for just about everyone. Expecting people to be downloading mp3s just as much during the holiday season is just .. stupid.

Sidenote: as a Canadian, I dont plan on buying a single CD or paying for a single song from the major labels while I'm paying a music industry tax on my blank media.

Re:Correlation does not equal causation

[TPFH]

why such a story is posted when this is self-evident than someone is going to refute the very content of the story ?

Common sense isn't all that common, and understanding of statistics even less so. Sure, we know the statistics of the mainstream media, let alone the RIAA puppets, is a joke, but what about "regular people."

Then again, even if the "regular people" believe this statistic, what good would it do the RIAA? Well, it might put more of the fear of lawsuits into them. My girlfriend worries that I might get sued, even though it is about the same odds as winning the lottery and I don't share RIAA music. Maybe the RIAA is hoping for a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It seems futile to refute RIAA propaganda, but as they say, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Or is it just meant to allow us to put some more sarcasms to the RIAA ? I still wonder.

Sarcasm of the RIAA can be entertaining.
Articles about the RIAA attract readers.

Is this new?

Re:Correlation does not equal causation

[DashEvil]

The eDonkey network (and it's many clients) are more sophisticated. You forgot them. :P

Re:Correlation does not equal causation

[clifyt]

"Sidenote: as a Canadian, I dont plan on buying a single CD or paying for a single song from the major labels while I'm paying a music industry tax on my blank media."

So, since Canadian artists and their management have given you the shaft without benefit of reach around, you are going to turn around and stick it to the rest of the world?

This tax benefits mainly folks like Celine Dion and Brian Adams and whomever sings those beer commercial songs. It doesn't benefit the artists of the rest of the world.

I for one work have worked in the background in somewhat popular music (nothing that big as I won't work on the crappy overly slick pop shit)...and generally I get substandard wages in hopes that the guys will make it bigger and I can share in a little of the album sales. As I have a day job and engineer / music techs don't really have a purpose on the road, most of the arguments about making the money while touring don't exist for me.

Shafting it to the rest of the world just because your country has decided to make it a point to subsudize your artists is just assinine. Its not as if you are in some third world country and can't afford it, nor has our recording agencies been able to penetrate your country to the point that they've been able to syphon some of this cash. They HAVE tried to impose those taxes here in the states, but if you could ask the gov't to give you personally 1 cent of everyones who filed taxes and get away with it more power to ya (if I thought I could do this, I'd be drafting a law and sending it to my congressperson today) -- its the country men that actually approve the laws that decide if your points are valid and NOT these special interest groups. They don't have to take the money these companies give them, and you don't have to elect anyone that panders to interests.

Re:Correlation does not equal causation

[Ryosen]

I must have missed the memo...when did purchasing music become compulsory? If he doesn't want to buy a product, that is his decision as a consumer. But you raise an interesting point, one that I think underlines the basic problem with the music industry today. It seems that you, as a representative of the music industry, feel a sense of entitlement. It is apparent that you are under the impression that it is our civic responsibility to purchase your product without regard to whether we want your product or not. This is an unfortunate position but just goes to illustrate a fundamental and continuing flaw with the recording industry: not listening to and addressing the needs of its customers.

You accuse the parent of "sticking it to" and "shafting it to" "the rest of the world" as if he is some sick, depraved individual whose actions exist with the sole intent of causing harm to everyone else. "How dare you not purchase my product!" you seem to say. You even go so far as to admit that you are in favor of legistlation mandating the subsidizing of the music industry by leveling a tax on people.

Until you modify your attitude of entitlement and lose your contempt for your target market, your product will continue to become less relevant and desired.

New Tactics

[citizenc]

Yup, new tactics are being employed. For example, I built a nice private, encrypted peer-to-peer network using WASTE. Kazaa, and all the viruses/fake files/incorrectly named files/spyware/trojans are a distant memory. ;)

Re:New Tactics

[Lumpy]

I also see their tactics working... My private p2p group has had an influx of over 100 requests to be menbers. The usual request rate has traditionally been around 1-5 a month. unfortunately for these people, it's an invite only not a request to eliminate asshat's from the RIAA getting on the inside and trying to call all our legit songs illegal.

because all we trade are indie bands that gave us the rights to trade their songs freely.... really!

Our closed/encrypted group like you are going to form has worked for years. mostly it was formed to get away from the crap-quality mp3's out on kazaa and the others (192 bitrate is the absolute minimum quality accepted with CORRECT id3 tags and file naming)

the RIAA is simply moving the people underground and out of their view.

bad statistics

[cyberwave]

People who are stupid enough to respond to those surveys are also stupid enough to respond to the RIAA lawsuits.

What really matters

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

From a smart business point of view (which is not necessarily that of the RIAA) it is not if there has been a reduction in freeloading downloads, but rather if there has been an increase in people paying money for music (physical CDs or paid downloads). Since those numbers are not being hyped all over the news, I'm willing to bet that the actual dollar numbers are still declining or at the very least not increasing in anywhere near the proportion of the decreased freeloading downloads.

My opinion...

[SB5]

I know that Kazaa has been flooded with tons of bad song files. The popular ones at least. Record companies have found out that for a hash on a song it does the first 300kb or something and then uses it exponentially.

I don't know of any other fairly popular file sharing program that you can find anything with, also it seems to be that there have been success with online music purchasing, specifically iTunes with 25 million songs downloaded.

Not really big news, everyone knew if the companies offered a dollar per song, and this is years ago, napster-era stuff, that people would buy it, but the record companies wanted to buck the consumer and squeeze that last few pennies out by not changing the industry despite what the people actually wanted.

Re:It worked for me

[ultrapenguin]

> I feel sorry for you poor folks thinking lossless music sounds good; I've moved on.

You must have really damn good ears if lossless music "doesnt sound good to you", sir.

Yeah....

[Erik Hollensbe]

We're just all using the newsgroups now.

The real question is...

[narratorDan]

Which tactic is working? Suing the crap out of d/l'rs or the rise in legitimate sources of online music?

Or it could be the other reason, I've got all the songs I want.

NarratorDan

Biased

[CelticWhisper]

Call me paranoid, but is it really that far-fetched a notion that the RIAA may have had considerable direct influence over what was written in that report? The more people write that the RIAA's tactics are working, the more other people will begin to believe that it's true, and it could potentially mean more people being scared away from using P2P to acquire music.

Of course, this says nothing for uncopyrighted, public-domain, or non-RIAA music, but given that the RIAA has had a history of using sledgehammers to swat flies, I daresay they'd be happier just stomping out P2P altogether than they would be with just getting their own music off of it.

Hmmmm..... add migration to BitTorrent and eMule

[aSiTiC]

I'd like to see an equally 'fuzzy' Excel graph of the increase in BitTorrent and eDonkey/eMule statistics. I would venture to guess that the sums of the total would be equal to or greater than the usage of KaZaA before RIAA lawsuits.

I personally know that my friends are quickly moving to eMule due to the degradation of KaZaA's usability. They are having no difficulty in migrating to eMule's interface. Perhaps the RIAA should realize that attacking one source doesn't effect other sources, especially with today's computer literate college youth.

Actually....

[BeerSlurpy]

The study shows that usage of P2P networks known to be heavily monitored by RIAA is down. This makes perfect sense to both the RIAA and to me, but the WHY is what makes all the difference. To admit why the traffic is really down would show that RIAA is hopelessly sliding into the abyss. It is so much easier for them to lie to themselves and their shareholders and say they are crushing the P2P threat to their business model.

But the p2p hydra has many heads.

RIAA is largely blind to the activity going on in the other networks, most of which are much harder to quickly traverse than gnutella or kazaa. Also, I imagine that no one has written a spidering program for them yet.

The other networks are flourishing right now. Without naming networks, the server count for my favorite p2p network is much higher than normal, as is the user count and the download speed. No one has gotten a warning letter or sued yet for activity on this network, to the best of my knowledge, although some german and spanish ISPs have begun to block the ports it uses.

Extra credit: Can you guess a name for this new network?

Re:It worked for me

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Here's a surprise for you - your "lossless" formats are in fact really lossy. To better understand this, consider the difference between 192KHz 24-bit PCM (the best DVD-Audio can do) and 44.1KHz 16-bit PCM (the format used on all CDs). Both are "lossless" per your definition, but all other things being equal, the DVD-A format provides a more complete reproduction than the CD format does. In fact, the CD format loses about 85% of the theoretical information content that the DVD-A format contains. Now compare the DVD-A format to a hypothetical 512KHz 32-bit PCM encoding, same sort of thing applies, ad infinitum.

My point is that while you may not like psycho-acoustical compression like mp3,vorbis,aac,etc - you are still losing information with your so-called "lossless" formats, it is just that the choice about what information to through away is not directly based on human perceptual capabilities but rather simple mechanical inability.

Inevitable?

[Kobayashi Maru]

I hate to admit it, but I do think that the RIAA will ultimately win this battle. Much as consumers accepted a higher price with the arrival of casette tapes, then CDs, some form of DRM will probably win out.

I've heard the argument that consumers will not accept paying for an intangible (that is, no physical object). But the iTunes model allows the consumer, in a limited way, control over the physical. From their purchase, they burn their physical dividend. One could argue that the consumer gains *more* through DRM/license-ware, as some plans allow the consumer to burn multiple CDs.

Most of the people I know (by that, I mean average, largely non-technical) still buy the occasional CD. They hate the RIAA in the abstract for Napster, but it does not stop them from buying. More and more have given up on P2P. Whether it's fear of a lawsuit or general hastle of finding Top-40, it just isn't worth their time anymore.

The RIAA doesn't need to destroy P2P, that would be impossible. All it needs to do is break it sufficiently to make their "alternative" more attractive. I personally believe thing will reach an equilibrium, eventually. P2P will always be around, in some form, for the dedicated. The RIAA will be sure to quash anything before it reaches critical mass. While on the other hand, DRM-ware will evolve into something more accomodating.

What about non-centralized networks?

[GrandCow]

I still download music without paying for it. I probably download more now than ever. The funny thing is I still buy the music that I think is good enough to hear more than once or twice.

Do I use Kazaa? hell no! I have to download 10 versions of a song just to get the "real" version of it... the one without some weird sound effects or just being the first 10 seconds repeated for the 4 minutes that the song should really be.

Welcome to bittorrent land. I'll not post the URL from the server I use regularly for obvious reasons, but rest assured I can get more there than I could with Kazaa anyday. Now I download whole albums at a time instead of just 1 or 2 songs in order to determine if a record is worth buying.

The great thing about bittorrent is that if people find that a song or album is fake they just stop sharing it. All of a sudden that album that should have 2000 people sharing it because it's so good only has 2 people sharing it (and they'll stop as soon as they unzip it and listen). That tells me to pass and find the real version.

I hope the RIAA realizes that instead of ending the problem they just made it burrow deeper. This time there is no centralized network that they can shut down in order to maximize profits from the unsuspecting consumer. If they kill one, 5 more will show up in it's place. I hope they are happy with what they have caused to be created.

Right now, the networks are small. Remember how small Napster or Kazaa began as? What happened a few months to a year later? Exactly... Expect 2004 or 2005 to be the year of bittorrent (or another decentralized network)

Re:What about non-centralized networks?

[GrodinTierce]

While 2004 or 2005 may be the "Year of BitTorrent", you seem to be mistaking BT for a decentralized network. While it may be more difficult for the RIAA to locate the servers that host the trackers, and new ones will inevitably pop up, the hassle of keeping up to date with BT servers is really all the RIAA needs; I doubt they've ever seriously imagined stopping all filesharing, but simply making it too much of a hassle/complicated for Joe Sixpack.

Also, I think that there is a common misunderstanding, particularly in the (big, scary) world outside of /., that America's youth (in general) are simply guaranteed to grow up computer-literate. While they may be more comfortable with computers than their parents, they're rarely much more knowledgable.

Although BT itself is pretty transparent, just click the link and download, actually finding usable torrents for content can be surprisingly difficult. With Kazaa, it's just open it up, search, and get many, many results (which used to be generally good, in terms of quality and authenticity, but the probability of success is decreasing), and then click. The fact that Kazaa (and Napster before it) was so transparent and simple was part of the reason so many college-students left it on, without even bothering to limit their upload.

However, to be fair, I think you're right about the trend towards decentralized networks, and I must admit, I'm not very familiar with eMule/eDonkey, but it does sound promising.

Re:Hmmmm..... add migration to BitTorrent and eMu

[Babbster]

Say it loud. Since installing Windows XP (I know, I know, Microsoft is evil) when Windows 98 passed my pain threshold, I've ONLY used eDonkey and BitTorrent. The latter in particular has the advantage that it's not as much a 24/7 proposition as other solutions. I typically leave a Torrent open long enough to give 2:1 to 3:1 ratios of upload:download and then I close out. There's also a legal advantage to the individual in that even if the RIAA/MPAA/etc. found me sharing/downloading, they're at most going to catch me with an album or three as opposed to every MP3 on my hard drive - this of course limits my potential liability if the RIAA files suit (and in fact makes such a suit far less attractive in a cost/benefit analysis).

It would be interesting if they could actually identify the people who stopped using the file-sharing programs they looked at. It might correspond to the more tech-savvy geeks who've moved on to better things.

RIAA tactics are like antibiotics

[IshanCaspian]

They have the effect of imposing natural selection on our P2P networks. Those that have vulnerable infrastructure will fall, and ones that do not will prosper. Sure, they are accomplishing their goal in the shortest of short terms, but they're creating the motivation and inspiration for unstoppable, anonymous pirate networks. It may look like the music industry is getting healthier, but they're just encouraging the creation of a bigger, badder bug.

Not that coincidental

[yintercept]

Sorry, but I doubt the music industry launching a double front attack with law suits and rather expensive and less usable alternatives is that much of a coincidence.

For that matter, the two pronged assault was probably orchestrated. To launch lawsuits without a replacement technology in place would be a losing strategy. Launching legitimate music channels while building a case against the anti-capitalist P2Pers would have weakened the case for built in copyright protection.

You probably should ammend your post to say that both the lawsuit and pay per song services were part of the strategy, and that the strategy is working quite well at keeping the power in the hands of the few.

Watching the free music crowd getting played for suckers was an extremely painful thing to watch...especially since their was a better option: If there was respect for the written laws, we could have had our MP3s and copied them to our MP3 player too. Hey, we may have even been in a better position to change the laws for the better.

Two flaws in the research model

[the-banker]

Though it doesn't completely discredit the research, there are flaws (one large, one not so large) that are immediately evident.

1. It was a telephone survey, which by law excludes the sampling of minors. All anecdotal research I have seen is that minors make up a significant population of online file traders. It is my opinion that this segment of the population could have a serious impact on the results.

2. The fact that the research is conducted during a time when the RIAA is efectively criminalizing file sharing will motivate people to answer dishonestly for fear of being "tagged" a copyright violator. When a survey relies on an honest answer to be an admission of criminal activity, people will not be as forthright with their answers.

I don't think that this would change the overall answer, that copyrighted file trading is down, but I think it would sigificantly impact the degree of its decrease. I think the Pew Internet research is most likely overstating the impact of the lawsuits.

Which actually raises another issue - how much of the decline can be attributed to other factors, such as:

1. Poor music released in 4th qtr 2003

2. Increased self-regulation of file sharing in the University/College segment

3. Filesharing becoming "old news" - basically the idea that everyone gets a TON of music when they first discover file sharing, then taper off as the previous 3 months of new music is no where near the volume of multiple decades of music people were grabbing at the outset.

4. The proliferation of licensed online music distribution, such as iTunes, Napster 2.0, etc

All in all I would conclude that the research has limited usefulness in measuring the effects of RIAA subpoena activity.

Re:It worked for me

[Anonymous Coward]

In this context, "Lossy" and "lossless" refer to the compression algorhythms, NOT as you seem to impute, the original encoding of the material. A mp3 (lossy compression) ripped from a 44.1 pcm stream will sound worse than a flac, shn, or ape (lossless compression) taken from the same stream.

That quibble aside, yes I agree with you. Taken to its logical conclusion, the best way to listen to great music is hearing great musicians play it live. So get out there and support them, dammit!

Surveys also find....

[91degrees]

That instances of jaywalking are lower in a police state.

I don't doubt the statistics, but are threats of disproportionate punishment really the way a civilised society should behave?

I'm sorry, but that's total bull crap

[melted]

Assuming that CD is properly recorded (which it rarely is, properly recorded CDs require properly constructed audio systems) and properly reproduced (even less chance, due to crappy stereos with cheap acoustics) there is NO information loss within audible frequency range. Shannon-Kotelnikov's theorem doesn't lie. Whatever gets in is reproduced exactly at the output. You have 96dB dynamic range (more than enough) and 2Hz to 20KHz frequency range (which is more that even babies can hear).

Now lemme explain why anything more than 20bit/96KHz is bull crap. First, let's tackle 96KHz. Raising the sampling frequency to 96KHz actually makes sense, because it becomes a lot easier to make a good sounding CD player. You don't need oversampling anymore and you don't need high-order digital filter to filter out the harmonic images in inaudible band. The same thing applies to recording. You can record with less than perfect low-pass filter, and even though there will be horrible aliasing you won't be able to hear it anyway as it will be well above 20KHz. Now let's consider 24bit part. If you calculate the potential dynamic range of a linear DAC with full 24 bit input you will see that it at this point it is PHYSICALLY impossible to construct an analog amplifier that will fully exploit more than 20 bits of its dynamic range. Why? Because the dynamic range will be limited by the noise floor, which in turn will be limited by thermal noise in resistors and semiconductors. Calculations show that anything above 20 bit is simply not worth the effort - you won't be able to hear a single bit of difference anyway, the first 4 bit will be well below the noise floor.

Re:In Boolean Algebra, Logic Tests You!

[Spock the Baptist]

---Methodology---

The Pew study was based on a poll.

I believe that one might be forgiven if they were skeptical that the change in the data is due to 'lip service' rather than representing an actual change in downloading habits. It may be that RIAAs lawsuit strategy has not altered downloading behavior so much as it's influenced the respondents forthrightness in answering questions about downloading.

The U.S. did it 12 years ago.

[Dr. Evil]

This tax benefits mainly folks like Celine Dion and Brian Adams and whomever sings those beer commercial songs. It doesn't benefit the artists of the rest of the world.

First, it's not a tax. It's a levy, tarrif or royalty, depending on who you talk to.

Second, it is imposed by international convention just about anywhere you would like to live. http://www.socan.ca/jsp/en/resources/around_world. jsp. It is infact well-distributed around the world.

Third, they succeeded in imposing a very similar system in the U.S., it happened twelve years ago. The RIAA http://www.riaa.com/issues/licensing/default.asp is a member of the AARC, who admisters the royalties in the U.S. http://www.aarcroyalties.com/.

AHRA requires manufacturers of digital audio recorders and blank digital discs and tapes to pay royalties to the United States Copyright Office ("Copyright Office") for the benefit of eligible artists and sound recording copyright owners. This is to compensate artists and copyright owners for lost revenues because of the displaced sales caused by home taping.

I don't really understand this stuff myself, but just check out the websites. They have lots of info up there about what they're doing and why.

One thing I really don't understand, is why "Happy Birthday" can demand royalties direct through AOL/Time Warner, when systems like this are in place. Urban legend?