The RIAA is getting ridiculous. [Archive] - Audio & Video Forums

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Swish
12-20-2008, 04:59 PM
The Recording Industry Association of America is taking a dangerous step with its decision to stop suing suspected music sharers and start cutting off their Internet access instead. While the discontinuation of the lawsuit practice has its merits, the move opens up a whole new can of worms -- one that could have serious implications for our future rights as consumers of information.

On the one hand, the shift -- revealed Friday, initially in a story published in The Wall Street Journal -- does mark the end of a troubling and generally ineffective process. RIAA's past practice of independently tracking down and going after individual users has raised countless questions, most of which have focused on the group's data gathering methodology. The organization has filed numerous lawsuits that have appeared to be faulty, including one now-infamous instance in which it attempted to sue a deceased woman. The woman -- who was 83 when she passed away -- "hated computers," her children said.
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Most data also suggests the lawsuits have done little to curb the online sharing of copyrighted music -- rather, the number of filesharers appears to have actually increased since RIAA started its lawsuit push in 2003. A report released this past September by the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes that music sharing is "more popular than ever, despite the widespread public awareness of lawsuits." Furthermore, the report points out, "the lawsuit campaign has not resulted in any royalties to artists."

(The vast majority of RIAA's lawsuits have resulted in minimal out-of-court settlements. The sole case that went to trial -- against a mother of six named Jammie Thomas -- saw its verdict thrown out in September. That case is still scheduled to be retried.)

The new plan, while ending the era of problem-ridden legal attacks, appears to circumvent the law and instead put the power directly into the hands of RIAA. The group says it will work directly with Internet service providers to go after people it believes are illegally sharing files. RIAA will notify an ISP, which will then warn the user and ultimately suspend or discontinue his access if a change is not observed. "Major ISPs" are said to be on-board with the idea.

Effectively, RIAA has turned itself into the sheriff, and your ISP into its deputy. Based on the same data gathering and user identification methods that have come under fire from the start, RIAA will now be able to get your Internet access limited or discontinued on its own if it for some reason flags you as an illegal filesharer. And I'm not the only one left feeling a little wary about that.

"This means more music fans are going to be harassed by the music industry," saysFred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"The problem is the lack of due process for those accused," von Lohmann continues. "In a world where hundreds of thousands, or millions, of copyright infringement allegations are automatically generated and delivered to ISPs, mistakes are going to be made. ... Anyone who has ever had to fight to correct an error on their credit reports will be able to imagine the trouble we're in for."

In essence, the music industry is trading one questionable practice for another. Striking a deal to deem itself the judge and your ISP the regulator is not the answer -- and it's not going to win the war, either.

What is the solution, then? The EFF suggests RIAA support a "voluntary collective licensing regime" -- basically, a legal peer-to-peer network that'd let music fans pay a small monthly fee for the right to freely trade music. A survey conducted this summer found an overwhelming 80 percent of current peer-to-peer users would be interested in paying for such a system. If organized, it'd put a stamp of approval on a process that's going on anyway -- and, for an inconsequential individual fee of something like $5 a month, the industry would be able to pay rights-holders based on how much their music is being downloaded.

"The more people share, the more money goes to rights-holders," the EFF points out. "The more competition in P2P software, the more rapid the innovation and improvement. The more freedom for fans to upload what they care about, the deeper the catalog."

The model follows the system set up for radio stations by organizations such as ASCAP and BMI. Perhaps RIAA would be wise to consider such a system, one that could serve the interests of all parties involved rather than harming them.

Here's what it boils down to: When almost every voice in earshot is crying out against the way you operate, you have to start wondering if maybe -- just maybe -- you're going about things the wrong way. The world is crying out, RIAA. It's time to start listening.

3-LockBox
12-20-2008, 11:31 PM
"getting ridiculous"? They arrived there long ago.

They want the biggest slice of the pie, and they want to put a barbed-wire fence around the rest of it. Their business model is broken, and they want to fix it so things are back to the way it was before...not before file sharing...but before the internet itself. Back to a day when the majority of the world relied on the industry for its new music. The industry could safely, easily predict trends and manufacture talent accordingly, ensuring billions of dollars in revenue (which was never fairly shared with the artists - ever).

The internet makes that old business model obsolete; it gives consumers a mechanism by which they can pursue they're own personal musical odessy, and the RIAA hates it for that, so they want to either kill it, or control the hell out of it. This isn't about file sharing. Its about consumers finding out the difference between really good music, the kind that the industry doesn't care to foster or develope, and the drivel that the industry wants to tell you to buy because its easier and more profitable for them. The RIAA literally thinks that they are the sole proprietors of not only recorded music, but music in general, p-e-r-i-o-d. They may very well want to outlaw owning any music media someday. Maybe they'll put a microchip in your head incase you're prone to humming popular music. Hey, I'm not really joking...they sue little kids, grandparents and dead people...they want access to our personal lives that rivals anything Homeland Security wants to do...they're not beyond anything.

Maybe record companies should broaden their scope, develope and nurture a wider variety of talent and musical styles, give artists time to develope an audience, cultivate quality, and stop trying to control artistic expsression, instead of just continuing to pander the same pablum to the very demographic that no longer buys its music.

kexodusc
12-21-2008, 04:37 AM
We're a screwed up society when you step back and think about this without any prejudices against the parties involved. In a sick way it is kind of funny that the property holder taking actions (as stupid, counterproductive, and ineffective as they may be) to defend its property is the bad guy in all this...Can't think of many other examples where the victim is so fiercely despised.

"getting ridiculous"? They arrived there long ago.

They want the biggest slice of the pie, and they want to put a barbed-wire fence around the rest of it. Their business model is broken, and they want to fix it so things are back to the way it was before...not before file sharing...but before the internet itself. Back to a day when the majority of the world relied on the industry for its new music. The industry could safely, easily predict trends and manufacture talent accordingly, ensuring billions of dollars in revenue (which was never fairly shared with the artists - ever).

The internet makes that old business model obsolete; it gives consumers a mechanism by which they can pursue they're own personal musical odessy, and the RIAA hates it for that, so they want to either kill it, or control the hell out of it. This isn't about file sharing. Its about consumers finding out the difference between really good music, the kind that the industry doesn't care to foster or develope, and the drivel that the industry wants to tell you to buy because its easier and more profitable for them. The RIAA literally thinks that they are the sole proprietors of not only recorded music, but music in general, p-e-r-i-o-d. They may very well want to outlaw owning any music media someday. Maybe they'll put a microchip in your head incase you're prone to humming popular music. Hey, I'm not really joking...they sue little kids, grandparents and dead people...they want access to our personal lives that rivals anything Homeland Security wants to do...they're not beyond anything.

Maybe record companies should broaden their scope, develope and nurture a wider variety of talent and musical styles, give artists time to develope an audience, cultivate quality, and stop trying to control artistic expsression, instead of just continuing to pander the same pablum to the very demographic that no longer buys its music.

Can't disagree with what your saying, but that last paragraph, none of that will solve the issue of illegal downloading. I think you're suggesting they should just accept it and get back to business? That's probably the best option. The RIAA could market music and treat the artists any way you'd want them to and people are still going to steal as much music. Two different issues from where I sit. The truth is that most of the time illegal downloads are not "lost sales", there's minimal evidence to support the notion that a cyber-thief would otherwise have bought the music they stole. Which makes the claims of the billions of dollars the RIAA "loses" almost insulting. How much time and money did the waste chasing that ghost?

The ISP's are going to be the next public enemy. They're holding so much clout and influence on everything these days and its only going to get worse.

Slosh
12-21-2008, 06:07 AM
They should hook up with a site like what.cd and have a monthly subscription. Keep the price realistic and the files DRM-free and they would be making more profit than they ever have. $10 a month and I'd bet they'd have millions of subscribers in no time.

ForeverAutumn
12-21-2008, 06:10 AM
Why would the ISP providers agree to this? By cutting off their own customers aren't they shooting themselves in the foot? Does file sharing hurt the ISP provider? Can they get into hot water for what their users are doing? What kind of power, if any, does the RIAA have over them? I don't understand why they would be on-side.

kexodusc
12-21-2008, 06:49 AM
Why would the ISP providers agree to this? By cutting off their own customers aren't they shooting themselves in the foot? Does file sharing hurt the ISP provider? Can they get into hot water for what their users are doing? What kind of power, if any, does the RIAA have over them? I don't understand why they would be on-side.
Lawyers.
The ISP's are afraid of being held accountable for allowing their customers, and implicitly assisting them, to break the law via distribution of copyrighted material.
To my knowledge, the ISP's haven't been the target of the RIAA's yet but maybe they will be in the future...then the ISP's would police this stuff much more rigorously, and probably unfairly.

02audionoob
12-21-2008, 07:58 AM
Since compressed digital files don't provide adequate sound quality for me, the facilities keeping my money from going to the recording industry are the used-CD stores and half.com.

Slosh
12-21-2008, 08:18 AM
Since compressed digital files don't provide adequate sound quality for me, the facilities keeping my money from going to the recording industry are the used-CD stores and half.com.Lots of sites have plenty of FLAC. In fact one of them is nothing but FLAC.

Finch Platte
12-21-2008, 09:32 AM
Since compressed digital files don't provide adequate sound quality for me, the facilities keeping my money from going to the recording industry are the used-CD stores and half.com.

I'm with you here, bub.

I buy new CDs, too, but sometimes I'll take them back & get credit for something else. I gotta have the artwork.

fp

Kevio
12-21-2008, 12:53 PM
Lawyers.
The ISP's are afraid of being held accountable for allowing their customers, and implicitly assisting them, to break the law via distribution of copyrighted material.
To my knowledge, the ISP's haven't been the target of the RIAA's yet but maybe they will be in the future...then the ISP's would police this stuff much more rigorously, and probably unfairly.Also some ISPs are having trouble handling the bandwidth load of P2P file share uploads and downloads.

It looks like a potentially more disruptive strategy. They really had to quit out of the old one. If they lost too many of these battles, they risk setting up a legal precidence that works against you going forward and beyond the internet.

I wonder what's going to happen when the first user sues their ISP (and RIAA?). How will the defendants be able to show that the user violated a law or terms of service? Will they even be required to?