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

[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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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?