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Will the New RIAA Tactic Boost P2P File Sharing?
newtley writes "The RIAA's claim that it'll stop suing people may have serious consequences... for the RIAA. When it dropped its attack on seven University of Michigan students, Recording Industry vs. The People wondered if the move was linked to three investigations, with MediaSentry as the target, before Michigan's Department of Labor and Economic Growth. Now, 'LSA sophomore Erin Breisacher said she stopped downloading music illegally after hearing about the possibility of receiving a lawsuit, but now that the RIAA has stopped pursuing lawsuits she "might start downloading again,"' says the Michigan Daily, going on to quote LSA senior Chad Nihranz as saying, 'I figure, if there aren't as many lawsuits they will come out with more software to allow students to download more.'"
What about some of the other potential tactics we've discussed recently, such as the UK's proposed £20 per year film and music tax or the $5 monthly fee suggested in the US? Is there anything the RIAA can do to reduce illegal file-sharing without generating massive amounts of bad publicity?
But if I get taxed £20, i'll be sure to download at least £200 worth of media.
because people are illegally downloading music they don't like?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I predict the following strategy:
1) Stop suing.
2) Collect data on the rise of file-sharing to justify their lawsuits.
3) Start suing
4) ???
5) Profit.
Well, I'm not sure about #5.
I believe the ultimate goal for the RIAA is to get a fee from every customer of an ISP. Money for doing nothing. The distribution of these fees will be such that independent artists get a token sum, while the RIAA gets money for nothing. That's what all the litigation is for -- to get this fee system established.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I know this sounds like the start of a bad joke, but this seems to be a fairly simple principle. When the USSR made it nearly impossible to get normal goods that the public wanted, an underground sprang up to fill the need. This is simple supply and demand economics. To generalize, making things overly expensive and tied to one internet connected device is only going to encourage a larger underground market.
People, on the whole, want to do the right thing, but you should not deprive them of their right to do whatever they want with things they have legally bought, or they will circumvent it. Humans adapt, learn, and defeat stupid things like copy protection and vendor-lock in all the time. If they really want to decrease piracy, then they should stop price gouging, stop overly restrictive DRM, allow better "try before you buy" methods, and truly embrace college communities via viral marketing techniques rather than call them criminals.
But hey, you already knew this. At this point, we're just beating a dead horse with this argument.
No, it's a NIGHTMARE.
Why should the music industry get a "yearly fee" from everyone with an internet connection? What if you never download music?
Never mind that if the music industry actually managed to make this happen, they could essentially STOP making music. Why would they bother? They'd be making billions of dollars a year on the *fees*!
A tax (because that's what it is) to keep an industry that produces entertainment/luxury products in business? Fuck that. It's total insanity, and if it ever does happen, the end of the world is near. Seriously.
"Is there anything the RIAA can do to reduce illegal file-sharing without generating massive amounts of bad publicity?"
Well, LOTS of things. /. article on big downloaders also being the biggest purchasers.
1. Stop treating their clients as criminals, (see earlier
2. Make more of their catalog available, faster, and more easily, to more paid download services.
2. Skip the DRM crap, (which will save money, too)
3. Divert the cash currently wasted on criminal clowns like MediaSentry and Sony rootkits to efforts to educate the public on how to download music safely, legally & cheaply.
4. Ink deals with content creators that take into account all revenue streams, (including concerts, the real money-spiners for many artists these days), with a fair share for all and which takes into consideration the investment made by production organisations in developing new talent.
5. Make it easy for people to buy/access, and archive/backup 'premium/HiRes/lossless' content (see 'DRM' above).
6. Promote standards for inteeoperability between various media storage and playback devices. Would I pay for to have my vast mp3 collection automagically tagged and sorted, with the ability to stream/upload to any device I own, and maybe grab the video if I want? Well, yes!
Now I'm going to stop dreaming, and go back to helping my teenage daughter convert a YouTube pop video for use on her iPod.
Not to mention that only the big labels get a slice of a pie - essentially stifling competition.
I sure as hell do. But not intentionally. I hear something on the radio, google the lyrics, figure out who wrote it, go to Amazon and figure out what's on the CD. Torrent or other p2p and grab the album, listen to it, and say "glad I didn't pay money for THAT" and delete it.
If there were a way to return crappy music I'd feel better about paying for it, but they assume if you open the package all you did was copy it and try to get it for free. If they want to assume I'm a pirate I have to play their game, and it ends up hurting them.
Typical artist contract has fees included with the assumption that albums will get damaged or otherwise unsaleable in transit. They have to turn this around and realize that digital copies will have the same fate - losses due to a marginal amount of piracy.
They paid for airtime in order to get higher billboard rankings - I save them the money and play it for myself, no cost. They think I'm a pirate if i listen before buying so I do. And in the end, I'm really doing my ISP a disservice by downloading so much crap I have a roughly 85% chance of having no interest in.