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RIAA To Stop Prosecuting Individual File Sharers
debatem1 writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, the RIAA has decided to abandon its current tactic of suing individuals for sharing copyrighted music. Ongoing lawsuits will be pursued to completion, but no new ones will be filed. The RIAA is going to try working with the ISPs to limit file-sharing services and cut off repeated users. This very surprising development apparently comes as a result of public distaste for the campaign." An RIAA spokesman is quoted as saying that the litigation campaign has been "successful in raising the public's awareness that file-sharing is illegal."
Dear Sir,
We are a group of UK film and TV producers, directors and writers. We are concerned that the successes of the creative industries in the UK are being undermined by the illegal online file-sharing of film and TV.
We are asking the Government to show its support by ensuring that internet service providers play their part in tackling this huge problem by giving us money. Lots of money. Just keep piling it in, we'll tell you when it's enough.
In 2007, up to (well, it could be) 25 per cent of all online TV piracy took place in the UK. Popular shows are downloaded illegally hundreds of thousands of times per episode, and some of them might even be ours rather than something American made with an actual budget.
It is true that in 2008, UK commercial TV broadcasters enjoyed the highest viewing figures in five years, that total TV viewing was up 10% year-on-year, and the valuable yet hard-to-reach 16 to 24-year-old demographic (the typical file-sharer) watched 4.9% more commercial TV and saw 12% more ads. But it's the principle of the thing: someone is getting money from something that touches something one of us once touched, therefore the money belongs to us. This is the style of corporate thinking that brought Britain its great economic gains from 1997 to 2007, after all.At a time when so many jobs are being lost in the wider economy, it is especially important that our gravy train be maintained.
Internet service providers have the ability to change the behaviour of those customers who illegally distribute content online. They have the power to make significant change and to prevent their infrastructure from being used on a wholesale scale for illegal activity. They have the power to stop people looking at the cover of Virgin Killer. They have a secret magic wand that will fix everything wrong with the media industry's income streams and they are refusing, with malice aforethought, to use it. If they are not prepared to give us all the free money we ask for and a bit more besides, they should be compelled to do so.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I mean, their current methods have apparently atleast been in breach of investigative laws in several states and they may still end up in mess because of it, but ending the thing will atleast lessen the exposure..
Alternative explanation is that they have actually understood that extortion is bad.. nah.. not likely.
Just like the French. First you give us fried potatoes to clog our arteries, then you dump your "huddled masses" from your country to the U.S., and now you invent the 3-strike law to ban us from ISPs without due process of law (a jury trial).
>>>The RIAA is going to try to working with the ISPs to limit file-sharing services and cut off repeated users.
Thanks. ;-)
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
There is absolutely nothing "illegal" about using bittorrent to download the latest linux distro or open office release.
But they want to tar every use with the same brush so they can stamp it out completely because it CAN be used in a naughty manner.
A bread knife CAN be used to kill someone but that's not what it was designed for.
"Meanwhile, music sales continue to fall. In 2003, the industry sold 656 million albums. In 2007, the number fell to 500 million CDs and digital albums, plus 844 million paid individual song downloads -- hardly enough to make up the decline in album sales."
Wow, so now that people are given the option of buying only the track they like instead of the whole album... album sales are dropping. Imagine that! I guess blaming it on piracy is easier than making all 12 songs on an album worth buying.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Working with the ISPs is an arms race at best. The ISPs block stuff, P2P devs come up with more and more devious ways to work around the blocks. Plus, in markets where competition is good, consumers will just vote with their feet.
Give it up, RIAA. Come up with better ways of making money. No one is willing to spend $20 to buy an album with 1 or 2 good songs on it. And few are willing to pay for what they will always be able to get for free.
My blog
For the individuals caught in them, the RIAA individual lawsuits really, really suck. Extortionate demands, no real ability to defend yourself(if your day in court costs you more than you can afford, it isn't your day in court), etc. On the other hand, though, the lawsuits as a tactic have been magnificently ineffective, and do very little to project RIAA power beyond those directly affected(and, indeed, the seem to project displeasure much further than they project obedience).
Focusing on the ISPs is potentially much more sinister. ISP user agreements, for anything other than expensive business accounts, typically have pretty broad service agreements, so they almost definitely won't even need to involve the courts to cut you off. If the RIAA and friends are successful, they could easily obtain de facto veto power over almost anybody's internet access, without any actually illegal conduct(unlike their present tactics). There is no reason to suspect that they would be any more discriminating or accurate in using such power than they currently are in filing lawsuits(probably less, in fact, since it will be cheaper than lawsuits), so the circle of the affected will be even wider. Not good.
1. announce an end to lawsuits
2. mediasentry keeps logging traffic
3. ???
4. file thousands of simultaneous lawsuits
5. bask in your crapulence
Because they were starting to lose.
They were starting to get in trouble with the courts, because they were filing lawsuits, and they in many cases had insufficient evidence to prove wrongdoing.
There were many cases where they were prosecuting innocent people, and this would ultimately be seen as harassment/abuse of the courts, resulting in sanctions for the RIAA.
The new approach will be more expedient, and less costly, since their victims don't get any due process rights.
They just send a letter to your ISP, and your ISP assumes you guilty.
You no longer have a chance to prove your innocence. If the RIAA doesn't like you and wants your connection turned off, they'll now have the means to make it happen, if your ISP joins their program.
See the article:
Depending on the agreement, the ISP will either forward the note to customers, or alert customers that they appear to be uploading music illegally, and ask them to stop. If the customers continue the file-sharing, they will get one or two more emails, perhaps accompanied by slower service from the provider. Finally, the ISP may cut off their access altogether.
The RIAA said it has agreements in principle with some ISPs, but declined to say which ones. But ISPs, which are increasingly cutting content deals of their own with entertainment companies, may have more incentive to work with the music labels now than in previous years.
So, they're going to try running their extortions entirely outside the courts now? This'll be a good test of the ISPs.
An RIAA spokesman is quoted as saying that the litigation campaign has been "successful in raising the public's awareness that file-sharing is illegal."
The spokesman went on to say that the campaign will be stopped after it became apparent that "it was also successful in raising the public's awareness that the RIAA are douches."
An RIAA spokesman is quoted as saying that the litigation campaign has been "successful in raising the public's awareness that file-sharing is illegal."
If it's so illegal, then why did they sue for damages (that is, compensation) rather than prosecute file-sharers for a crime? You don't sue people because they robbed banks or stabbed someone, you sue because they owe you money for some reason.
So the real message they were sending to the public is, "File sharing takes money out of our pockets." Well, duh.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
An RIAA spokesman is quoted as saying that the litigation campaign has been "successful in raising the public's awareness that file-sharing is illegal."
That says it all really. They have managed a disinformation campaign to make people think that file sharing is illegal. No mention of the fact that it is perfectly legal if you have rights to the work, it is public domain, or you are using it under "fair use" terms, or a number of other more obscure legal circumstances.
Think of it this way, nobody bats an eyelid when you say "filesharing is illegal", but you would get some surprised looks if you said "video recording is illegal" or "photocopying is illegal" - they have managed to taint the technology with a possible illegal use.
It says "The RIAA is going to try to working with the ISPs to limit file-sharing services and cut off repeated users.". So they're not going to take you to court, they're just going to get your ISP to kick you off and with any luck blacklist you. ISPs are presumably so scared of the RIAA that they'll comply wherever possible.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
An RIAA spokesman is quoted as saying that the litigation campaign has been "successful in raising the public's awareness that file-sharing is illegal."
It's also raised public awareness that the RIAA is the scum of the earth who will sue 12 year old girls for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I've personally never understood the concept that any kind of publicity that could make people spit on you when you walk on the street could possibly have any positive value down the line.
Hey, wait a minute! French fries allegedly come from Belgium. Both the French and the Belgians consider the term "French fries" to be grossly unfair: the Belgians feel they deserve the credit, and the French feel they don't deserve the blame.
Of course, there is the possibility that the first prototype fries were planted in Belgium by French agents provocateurs.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
The RIAA has taken to suing a lot of people who turned out to be innocent, on very flimsy evidence. If there is one thing that Americans generally dislike, it's programs, no matter how well-intentioned, that end up often getting the wrong people.
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.1/iso/openSUSE-11.1-DVD-i586.iso.torrent
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.1/iso/openSUSE-11.1-DVD-x86_64.iso.torrent
I am sharing these, now come and try to sue my ISP. He will be having a laugh. Try go after the originating provider and they will tear you a new one.
It is nice to see that what they wanted was to misinform people about their rights.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It isn't like the rest of French cuisine is Richard-Simmons-Approved when eaten in the kind of quantities Americans typically eat things, so I don't see why they'd care about fries in particular.
I liked that period of time where we were supposed to call them "Freedom Fries". It made it easier to spot imbeciles.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
So the RIAA is offering to "work with ISPs." From the sound of it, what they want is for the ISPs to do a lot of work monitoring users, and take a serious public-relations risk for banning them. If I ran an ISP, I would not exactly be falling over myself to embrace those new headaches.
What's in it for the ISPs? If the RIAA is offering a carrot, then the size of the carrot is limited by the ever-diminishing money the RIAA has to offer. If they're trying to threaten with a stick, they're relying on either regulation, lobbying, or lawsuits -- in all three arenas, ISPs are more than a match for them in terms of money and influence.
The more I think about it, the more I realize this is just a face-saving tactic, and the "cooperative relationship" can't last because it's contrary to the ISPs best interests.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I don't think the ISPs will bite down on this. The ISP will obviously need to report the results to the RIAA, otherwise the RIAA will cry foul. Then, if the ISP misses an obvious "illegal activity" the ISP might be held liable by the RIAA for not protecting the RIAA's intellectual property.
"You failed to notify your customers that we knew they're stealing. So now, it's your fault."
I'm willing to bet more than a few ISPs will worry about this possible outcome.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
How does this affect their campaign against colleges? i know there was an article in which RIAA wanted to extort money from colleges and agree not to sue them but what if colleges say no. is the ISP going to shut down internet access to the entire university if the RIAA asks for it?
It's worse than that - they want you to think that all filesharing of music/video is illegal, which isn't true either. The trouble is, the music and video content that doesn't come from them and is perfectly legal to share is in fact produced by their competitors. So in stopping you sharing 'their' content, they also have an incentive to stop you sharing anybody else's content. Sharing of linux distros or software is really an irrelevance here, what they're really doing is trying to stop Joe Public's mindshare from drifting away from them and their offerings.
43 - For those who require slightly more than the answer to life, the universe and everything.
Citation needed please. Specifically I would be interested to know how many people the RIAA has sued, and of those people, how many have been found innocent in court. Anyone who has settled must be excluded from this count since their guilt or innocence has not been proven. Thanks.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Go ahead and quote quote wikipedia, but I saw on the History Chanel last night (Modern Marvels, the fast food episode) that French fries were "discovered" and brought back to America by Jefferson after his post as ambassador to the French. So, even if they were invented in Belgium first, America made the french fry a staple food and Jefferson brought them to us from the French.
I'm using all of my mod points to mod ancient memes down. Please join me.
When you actually had to break the law in order to get the RIAA all up in your jock, non-law-breakers such as myself were left in relative peace.
Since they've now explicitly and announcedly decided to adopt a strategy of technology control measures, they just became a thorn in every geek's side.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
The RIAA is not stupid.
I repeat: the RIAA is not stupid.
Their assault on technology is not the result of misguided or clueless decision makers.
Their assault on technology has gone beyond being attributed to ignorance. Too many people have explained (publically and, privately, to them) what's up.
This is malice. I believe malice is an acceptable response.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Any plan that requires the participation of good lawyers needs a really good plan B.
Well, thanks to the Internet, I'm now bored with sex.
...and that enemy is small independent content creators who are gradually making RIAA artists irrelevant, but who rely on consumer-grade internet connections to get their product out. It's probably too much for ISPs to actually watch what their customers are pushing through their pipes, and an independent musician legally uploading files to a sharing site (or recording engineer/CD plant, etc.) looks an awful lot like an evildoer. Easier to just stop all of the traffic.
I'm wondering how our friend NewYorkCountyLawyer feels, waking up to discover the legal war is over? Or is it? We're all suspicious of the RIAA but my mind harkens back to the pictures of the liberation of Paris in World War II. Wonder if NYCL feels that way?
Well my initial reaction is this:
If it's true... it's about time. Meanwhile, what about the unfortunates who are presently entangled already in these unjust lawsuits? Why won't the RIAA drop those cases too? If it was bad business to start them, why isn't it bad business to keep on throwing good money after bad? I hope consumers will remember this 5 1/2-year reign of terror, and will shun RIAA products, and I hope the legal profession will place a black mark next to the names of those "lawyers" who participated in this foul calumny.
If I have any additional thoughts I'll be appending them here in my "Editor's note".
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I've gone back and reformatted the comment for readability, again, my apologies
I'm sure this will be flamed, but I'm so very happy to see this happen.
Suing their customers was one of the stupidest moves in the world. They alienated their customer base. They initially chose to fight the market instead of working with it and the long term consequences will probably be dire. When the market started to demand a digital format they should have immediately reacted (or perhaps should have seen the writing on the wall and been proactive) and begun selling online, as they do now.
Consider this: College students, on the whole, have low disposable income. The "goal" of college is to increase your earnings potential and have more disposable income. If you sue a college student there is a good chance that you will force them to leave school for lack of time, energy and funds to finish college. The earnings potential of that college student lowers to near zero.
Most people don't steal or commit crimes, even if they know they won't get caught, if they have a choice. Once these college students become professionals and increase their disposable income the time/cost of "stealing" music becomes not worth it and they'll start to pay for their music (assuming a good product, of course). Most industries work with law enforcement and law creation to mold the system into what they want. Although I agree that lobbying will make it harder to download in the long run, that's the point and that is their goal. They will try to take a mile and other groups will have to fight against them to limit how much they take. That is the system that we live in, and that is acceptable and accepted behavior from an industry.
Music Piracy, in a way, is a new entrant into the Music industry's marketplace. A competitor as it were and should be treated as such. I'm glad to see that is finally happening. Now they have new challenges to face. Album sales, and total sales, are declining. If the average album has 11 songs and they sold 840 million singles, then they sold about 80 million albums worth of music, plus the 500 million albums, bringing them to 580, about a 12% drop from 650 million.
They have a product set, they have a set of target markets, now it is time to go back to the drawing board and create a new strategic marketing plan. Product, Place, Price and Promotion. Cost vs Differentiation. Leadership vs Adequacy.
That's just a few ideas that come to mind immediately on ways that they might consider improving their marketing, more research is obviously needed.
Meanwhile, music sales continue to fall. In 2003, the industry sold 656 million albums. In 2007, the number fell to 500 million CDs and digital albums, plus 844 million paid individual song downloads -- hardly enough to make up the decline in album sales."
For this exercise, I'm going to use the information located here: http://futureofthemusicindustry.blogspot.com/2005/01/music-downloads-jupiter-research.html (which is also backed up on many other sites)
For an album costing $15.99:
* $0.17 = 1.06316% : Musiciansâ(TM) unions
* $0.80 = 5.00312% : Packaging/manufacturing
* $0.82 = 5.1282% : Publishing royalties
* $0.80 = 5.00312% : Retail profit
* $0.90 = 5.62851% : Distribution
* $1.60 = 10.00625% : Artistsâ(TM) royalties
* $1.70 = 10.63164% : Label profit
* $2.40 = 15.0038% : Marketing/promotion
* $2.91 = 18.19887% : Label overhead
* $3.89 = 24.3277% : Retail overhead
Using that, if we apply it to their 656 million albums sold in 2003, we get 1.70 x 656,000,000 = $1,115,200,000
But, just a note, that this number is likely smaller due to the constantly decreasing costs of CD production (The production costs and overhead were likely more in 2003 than what is outlined in this chart)
Also, if we apply that to the 500 million albums today, we get 1.70 x 500,000,000 = $850,000,000
Another note, that this number is likely higher due to some of those album sales being digital. I can't tell by how much due to lack of information (or at least what I'm willing to research)
While this is obviously a much smaller number, we have to take digital sales into account. Using the chart above, we can eliminate Retail Profit, Retail Overhead, Packaging and Distrubtion from the mix and replace it with a 35% itunes cut (lets just pretend itunes is the only reseller so I dont have to research the cuts from Microsoft and the like). Label overhead is also going to drop significantly, but by how much, I can't be sure.
Regardless, we're looking at AT LEAST a 5% increase in profit for the record labels. Apply that to the 844 million songs and we get $126,600,000 (At minimum) profit for downloaded songs (as opposed to the $84M using the old album profit breakdown)
This leaves us with: 126 600 000 (at minimum) + 850,000,000 (at minimum) = $976,600,000 (at minimum x 2)
So they're most definitely not losing the same amount of money as they are trying to claim. They are making more profits on a different business model. When you break it down you'll see that their profits have either barely been dented, or more likely have stayed the same or even increased.
And when you tack on the $400,000,000 estimated money coming from copyright settlements you'll see that the RIAA = Full of Shit (of all my shitty math in this post, this is about the only equation I can say with certainty is completely accurate).
Did the spokesman make this statement in front of a huge "Mission Accomplished" banner?
What's really happened is a happy confluence of internal corporate reality, legal reverses, new political calculations, technological innovation, and irreversible shifts in consumer behavior.
The internal corporate reality is that the old, hard-liner Baby Boomers have seen the writing on the wall and taken early retirement to spend more time with their families and write their memoirs, or they have been sacked for year after year of plummeting revenues. They have been replaced with Gen X or near-Gen X people and younger who are not deaf to the scorn of their peers nor to the trends in technology and music consumption.
The legal reverses include losing individual cases and having entire methodologies banned by the courts, but what's perhaps worse is that defeating the RIAA has become a teaching exercise for entire law schools. When future generations of lawyers are being trained to fight evil with your organization as the EVIL, you know this particular strategy is in trouble.
The new political calculations are what others have mentioned and discussed here, that they're now pinning their hopes on winning the debate over net neutrality. But they don't have a good shot at that because too many other players' interests, players who are much bigger and richer than the RIAA, are aligned against them. Never mind the consumers, since they never count for the people like those in the RIAA who like to play like they're Masters of the Universe.
Technological innovation continues, well, at least in the forms in which people use it to access music. iTunes is the model now for how people get new music. CDs? Please. Downloads in all their forms are the way anyone under 35 now gets their music. Artists may be in the music business, but the RIAA is in the CD business. The RIAA would have as much luck trying to force everyone to go back to 8-track as trying to force them to go back to CDs.
Consumer behavior has irreversibly shifted against the RIAA. As others have pointed out, the cartel made sense when it was hard to produce professional sounding music and difficult to distribute it. Both those barriers have been almost totally eliminated. Musicians can do it all themselves now, and fans can find them through so many channels like Facebook, etc. that are outside the control of the cartel. But it's not just the How and Where that have escaped the cartel's control, it's also the What. The average band and average fan have a wealth of indy music to sample and find influences in that is beyond the wildest dreams of those brought up under the tyranny of the old cartel system. And they have found the quality of the stuff out there to be much higher than the synth-pop that cartel-produced music ultimately devolved into.
So the RIAA is the walking dead. The record stores like Tower Records have already gone. The parlor game now is to guess how much longer the RIAA needs to bleed before they implode entirely. Their abandonment of the legal strategy is a strong indication that we don't have much longer to wait. If this recession/depression lasts longer than 6 months, the RIAA will not survive the year.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
many of us who stopped buying their products will take a while to bring back into their fold - if ever
I hope it's never.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
This has less to do with the RIAA deciding to switch tactics in enforcing copyrights and it has more to do with the RIAA not wanting a legal precedent set about file sharing.
Speaking as a P2P developer, this again raises the question of why the DMCA safeharbour provisions have never been applied by various defenses. (NYCL!) This change in behavior amounts to overly broad DMCA takedown notices, which conspicuously weren't part of RIAA scare tactics before.
1. If I was aware of a potential defense that was never articulated in a filed public legal document, I wouldn't discuss it with an anonymous stranger on Slashdot.
2. If you are so knowledgeable about this defense which all of the defendants' lawyers have overlooked, why don't you make your case for it now, and tell us what section or sections of the DMCA you are referring to, what other legal authority you have for it, and how it would be applicable to a person who is a engaged in file sharing over Limewire or Kazaa. That would be helpful.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
You say,
I say, "Just look for the Chinese restaurants." No, really, I'm being serious -- I've done some globetrotting, and everywhere I've gone, I've found Chinese restaurants. It's kinda funny, really, when even on remote tiny non-touristy islands in the Spanish-speaking part of the Caribbean, or on the tiny islands of the Pacific Northwest, you can find at least one Chinese restaurant somewhere.
This reminds me of a true story of a friend of mine. He's an interesting bloke -- his dad sounds like the punchline to a weird joke, as an Iraqi Jew living in Singapore and running a Cajun pork BBQ restaurant...
But anyway, let's call my friend Andy. He grew up partly in China, and speaks fluent Chinese and English. He was in Mexico City visiting some friends, and was walking across part of town to visit some other friends for a party. Only he'd gotten lost, and didn't speak a lick of Spanish. So what does he do? He finds the local Chinese restaurant. He walked up to the counter and asked, in flawless Chinese, how to get to XYZ address.
The Chinese proprietor and cash register girl just stood their with their mouths wide open for a moment, before finally getting out, "Why are you speaking Chinese to us?" To which Andy replied, "Because I don't speak Spanish." "Oh. Well, you take a right here and a left there..."
So seriously, knowing Chinese could also be extremely useful for international travelers. If you ever get lost, just find the local Chinese restaurant.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Because the ISP's know damn well what will happen when people find out who they are. Someone needs to dig this up fast and post it far and wide. When these ISP's are raped by class action lawsuits and face customers bailing in droves, you will see a different tune.
Excellent point, plasmacutter. If one has a choice of ISP's, as most people do nowadays, why choose one that's in bed with the RIAA?
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
that they stopped filing lawsuits "months ago" and haven't filed their mass lawsuits since early Fall, and that the last suit they filed was in August....I did a little investigating and found out that they've been filing tons of lawsuits right through last week.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful