RIAA Claims P2P Has Been Contained

Magorak writes "USA Today is reporting the RIAA now claims that the issues surrounding P2P and piracy have been contained and are no longer as big an issue as they once were. From the article; 'The problem has not been eliminated,' says association CEO Mitch Bainwol. 'But we believe digital downloads have emerged into a growing, thriving business, and file-trading is flat.'"

Comments

Nice to see wrong statistics propagated

[jhill]

Would appear that the writer of the story does what writers do best, not research facts. Appears that they're still using the same old sorry BS of CD sales dropped 30% in whatever year it was. When in fact, what has been shown is that it was singles that dropped ( you know, the things you can't find any more, because people aren't willing to pay 5 dollars for 1 song on a CD ), during that year CD sales actually increased.

Overall the article is rather blah, I'm sort of surprised that they didn't throw in there something about the lose of some umpteen billion dollars that they would have made if it weren't for illegal file sharing...the good myth of each download is a lost sale.

It's completely and utterly true

[Toby The Economist]

It's true - because everyone who is going to do P2P download is now doing it.

So he is right; P2P growth is flat - in exactly the same way TV purchase growth is flat.

Note any shortage of TVs around the first world? alas not...

Re:It's completely and utterly true

[Toby The Economist]

In fact, thinking about it, what I find interesting is the implied equivelence of legal and illegal downloads.

There appears to exist in the RIAA mind the notion that if legal downloads rise, illegal downloads must fall.

I think the derives from a failure to understand that the majority of illegal downloads *would never have otherwise been a legal purchase*.

Naturally, if you imagine the two are precisely correlated, if you see that the rate of illegal download growth has leveled out, you might - if you wanted to imagine it were so - consider that the problem had been "contained", especially since the number of legal downloads is rising (naturally, since it began recently at zero).

In reality of course it simply means the problem has maximized and naturally, with no relation to the RIAA in any way, the number of users has levelled out.

The RIAA just doesn't get it, it seems.

Of course, we have to consider how the RIAA are measuring numbers - absolutely nothing is said about this. Are they still fixated on the now-defunct Kazaa network? looking on eMule right now, there appear to be approximately 19 (nineteen) million concurrent users. On one P2P network, just at this moment. In the evenings UK time it's about 26 (twenty-six) million.

It's quite likely their measuring method is deliberately deceptive, in which case the statement means even less that it does.

Re:It's completely and utterly true

[shark72]

"I think the derives from a failure to understand that the majority of illegal downloads *would never have otherwise been a legal purchase*."

Failure to understand, or failure to acknowledge? It's fun to say "The RIAA is a bunch of doodyheads" and all, but I think they're capable of hiring people who tell them the truth. How they spin this, however, is a different matter. I think it's very dangerous to assume that the collective employees of the RIAA are simply too stupid to understand this. Underestimating your enemy is a big mistake.

At any rate, "would not have otherwise been a purchase" is a tautology. Nowadays, many people don't purchase music not because it's not worth the money, but because the general idea isn't something they'd consider, whereas a generation before, this wouldn't even be an issue. Their concern is that the new generation simply doesn't consider purchasing music to be worth serious consideration. Why would they, when music is readily available for free? The RIAA is not working on the micro level (let's incent 15-year-old Johnny to buy that track instead of downloading it) but on the macro level (attempting to maintain the belief that music is worth paying for).

"In reality of course it simply means the problem has maximized and naturally, with no relation to the RIAA in any way, the number of users has levelled out."

If I understand you correctly, you're of the strong belief that the various carrots and sticks (the lawsuits, the education programs, the growing availability of legit only music), have not had any effect? They have not caused a single person to stop pirating?

This sounds preposterous to me, but you used phrases like "of course" and "no relation to the RIAA in any way" so you sound pretty sure of yourself. Am I misunderstanding you?

Good: we want them to think they have won

[KWTm]

You know what? Maybe they have won, if student pirating has been curbed to the extent that they want. And if more digital downloads are legal now than before, then that's great. It probably means that more companies are getting a clue about how to take advantage of the business model, but we'll let the RIAA save face.

All we want them to do is quit trying to stomp out every conceivable method of information transfer in the name of stopping piracy, and go back to their executive boardrooms and golf courses.

Re:Good: we want them to think they have won

[flibuste]

No, they would have won if former users of P2P were now downloading songs from paying sites, which is probably not the case. Have all the people willing to "illegaly" (meaning "against MAFIAA rules") download music moved to ITunes or such? I doubt it. What we'll see is an upcoming huge drop in CD sales in favor of downloaded music, but will the gross income increase? I am not sure.

They're losing the battle they started. Just as in project management, to keep face when a project is majorly failing, declare a success mid-course then terminate the project before big money gets lost.

Re:If you were the RIAA...

[Opportunist]

I'd try to squeeze as much money outta the organisation as I legally can before it sinks. Because it will. They're sitting on the horse cart and the automobile came into play.

Re:There's actually a little truth in this.

[jawtheshark]

Doing this these days will usually yield you one or two real copies, and hundreds of viruse files or trojans.

I just tried this on Gnucleus: I searched for "Hips Don't Lie" from "Shakira". I'm not a fan or so, it was just the first popular thing that popped up in my mind. After a few seconds waiting I got over 3000 hits, then I just sorted on size in reverse order. Those 200KiByte zip files and exe files won't fool anyone that knows that a regular MP3 is about 3MiByte. Now sort on "Distribution" (number of hosts having the same file), and downloaded it. (

For sure, it was indeed the correct song. I have now deleted it again, since I do not care much about the song, but frankly it's not as if it's unmanagable for a non-technical person. I have given Gnucleus to some non-tech-friends and they use it all the time without any problem (of course, they are behind a hardware firewall and have antivirus software installed and up to date)

Hmmmm....

[Opportunist]

That number is huge but hasn't grown substantially, while video piracy has. "The music industry isn't seeing double-digit growth in piracy anymore, but Hollywood is," Garland says.

So in other words, they're handing over the job of showering their customers with lawsuits to the MPAA. What's that, a relay race? Share the bad press for stomping on people's rights so nobody gets hurt too much?

It's a trick. Get an axe.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they've won. They've got the "get rid of allofmp3.com" as one of the requirements for Russia to join the WTO, and they've got Sweden raiding (apparently against Swedish law) ThePirateBay just because the U.S. asked! Seriously, this isn't about P2P. This is about controlling distribution channels. You don't go after BitTorrent because you people are using it to pirate your copyrighted material. You go after the people distributing the copies. (Just like you don't go after Ford because people use cars to move drugs around the country. On the other hand, if you are a cartel of taxi drivers, removing private cars from the road is a great way to guaranteed revenues.) They only way I'll believe this is the end of it is if I see sales figures for RIAA members dropping drastically (and then they'd just blame pirates...).

Re:There's actually a little truth in this.

[Spinalcold]

Untrue, there are still many programs out there that newbies can use. Soulseek is extremely easy to use, and while it's still a bit buggy, the networks are clean.

But in all honesty, I don't really care about that type of filesharing as much anymore. File sharing has moved beyond that into social networking, how many people now send MP3's over AIM or MSN. I constantly recommend albums to friends and they recommend them to me. Maybe it has to do with me already having a lot of music and I'm just searching for the new thing, but look at how many bands are offering their songs on My Space. Also, the new chat clients like Qnext have music browsing built right in so you can look at your friends music collection.

Just my 2 cents though.

Re:i tried really

[IAmTheDave]

Right - so now that they ARE victorious, will they stop filing 20k John Doe lawsuits per month? Or is that whole thing still "game on"?

Good Project Managers are always successful

[vinn01]

if you can't really achieve victory, just change the goalposts to something easier and calim you won.

I used to have a Project Manager who did that for his trainwreck projects. His projects were *always* successful. Unfinished requirements became "future enhancements". Non-working projects became "proof of concepts". Half-baked projects became "prototypes".

The wonderful thing about project schedules and requirements is nobody saves the previous version.

Nobody has ever underestimated the gullibility of upper-managers.

And nobody has ever underestimated the gullibility of people who read industry press releases.

Re:If you were the RIAA...

[happyemoticon]

The perception that the *AA is going away is somewhat flawed. Sure, like many companies in the past, they are hanging onto outmoded business models and many individual companies are doomed to shrink. But the 800 lb gorillas of the past, such as IBM and Xerox, didn't go away - they just reinvented themselves and shrank somewhat, while other companies took innovations that the gorillas were too thick to see as viable and ran with them.

To say that their entire business is going to disappear is to overlook the fact that most people like the music that they sell, and like buying their albums. Sure, I have friends who can record songs that sound as good as any studio-polished single in their bedrooms on commodity equipment. Certainly, I watched Star Wreck: The Pirkinning, and I know that fan films can be made at a fraction of the cost of a real motion picture, with more thigh-high boots and miniskirts, and still look great. But if you indulge in these things, it means you're an avant-garde free content nerd, and you are in the minority. I know exactly how out-of touch I am, because I'm looking at last year's top 50 and I don't have a clue what 95% of them are. But clearly somebody's buying them, and I suspect that these people would be more than happy to download portions of these songs as ringtones onto their Verizon mobile phone. Whole droves of teenagers are listening to something with the nonce-words "Numa, Numa" in it, and buying it on ITMS as well.

Imagine that. I'm 23 this Thursday, I have about five computers, I write for a living, play the guitar, have a reasonably active social life, and I feel like both a luddite and a hermit. I'm two steps away from Abe Simpson. Is this what all of adulthood is like?

Anyway, what is going to contract is the retail distribution channels, such as movie theaters and music stores. The cable companies and the telcos will pick up the slack like I've hinted at above. However, since the content owners still have the majority of the market and you still have to do business with them to have a prayer of making it anyway, they will continue to snatch up new artists and buy their souls.

Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella

[Anonymous Coward]

Would almost think RIAA have done us a favor. They brought down the big commercial proprietary networks like kazaa, with their adware spyware-installing windows-clients. Left is the decentralized free uncontrollable networks, like gnutella an bittorrent. Now the masses have to share their files on these networks, an I can use a non-malware client on an operating system of my choice.

Now, if only someone would do the same for IM and VOIP.. and operating systems...

Re:If you were the RIAA...

[drinkypoo]

Imagine that. I'm 23 this Thursday, I have about five computers, I write for a living, play the guitar, have a reasonably active social life, and I feel like both a luddite and a hermit. I'm two steps away from Abe Simpson. Is this what all of adulthood is like?

I dunno, but I've felt that way since before I was 23. Then again, I'm a recluse anyway, I've never been all that social, although I do very well in most highly social situations. (Slashdot doesn't count, this isn't the real world, it's a roleplaying game.)

I think it's more about what maturity is like than "adulthood" which is based on age and little more. Once you grow up a bit, you realize what crap all that is, and start shaking your fist at those darned kids and their mangy dog.

I've always been a weirdo, though, so what do I know? Besides how to be weird, that is.

I think you're right, but go a little further...

[Mateo_LeFou]

What I see is a classic erosion of an unnecessary middleman. RIAA proved themselves really good, until 1990, at packaging and distributing music. Now there's an easy-to-implement strategy for just hooking artists directly up with listeners.

But this doesn't kill the "music industry". There will always be a need for a legitimation structure -- an industry that sifts the amateurish crap from the high-quality art. But it won't be done through "push" marketing: "Britney is the next Madonna (as if Madonna was a major artist anyway)! Coldplay is the next U2!" No, listeners will want good information about who's doing what, and they'll decide who's the next what. RIAA has got so distracted shrieking about "piracy" that they've forgotten their core competency: put simply: telling good from bad. That's a service people will always want and pay for.

I don't neglect the obvious fact that the RIAA not been a bastion of good taste recently; they've focused for over a decade on making the bad look good, in order to simplify their lives by stamping formula music out of a mold and just marketing it all to hell so that people buy it. Or payolizing it so that people don't realize there's anything else out there. But those days are numbered.

But getting audio files (in whatever format) into the hands of listeners? Sorry, the mechanism there is well-understood and staggeringly efficient.

Comments on movies in another post. Maybe.