The RIAA fights a hopeless war
p2pnet.net news:- In one of their worst blunders yet, the members of the Big 4 music cartel, Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, have started a raging backlash in schools across America it’ll be impossible to stop.
Their RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has lifted a page from George W. Bush’s War on Terror, says an editorial in Oklahoma State University’s The Daily O’Collegian.
“Taking a play out of President Bush’s book, the Recording Industry Association of America has developed a surge of its own, as it launched an escalated offensive this past week targeted at college students accused of downloading music illegally,” says the post, referring to the RIAA’s ‘incriminate yourself‘ site and its associated blackmail letter, as well as ‘or else’ missives sent to teaching institutions.
Nor is The Daily O’Collegian alone. Other school publications are railing against the RIAA and its terror tactics.
“College students are an important market for the record labels,” says Penn State’s The Collegian. “Instead of trying to scare students into stopping piracy, the RIAA should offer positive alternatives.”
Ironically, Penn State was the first major university to in effect become a Big 4 sales, marketing and enforcement division, school president Graham Spanier working enthusiastically alongside the RIAA.
“Since the lawsuits began, album sales have continued to decline and digital music sales have not made up the difference,” says The Collegian. “In that same time period illegal downloading has continued, if not grown.”
The sue ‘em all campaign against not only students but also their brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and even kid brothers and sisters was launched in 2003 and with the mainstream media acting as their PR units, the Big 4 claim the rampage is having a marked effect.
However, the exact opposite is true. In four years the Big 4 have been unable to make even the smallest impression on Net music lovers. They continue to look to the p2p networks as well as the increasing numbers of download sites and services, many of them run by musicians themselves, which are springing up online every day.
Only Apple with it’s iTunes iPod front-end loader, paid for by Apple adherents, can be said to be a viable corporate download site touting Big 4 ‘product’.
Apple says since 2003, it’s sold two billion downloads. But against that, new figures say as a conservative estimate, more than a billion files are moving around the p2p networks not every year or even every month, but every day.
All the labels are doing is further alienating an already thoroughly disenchanted consumer base and adding to the brand new customer groups who want nothing whatsoever to do with the Big 4 or their music.
How to the victims themselves feel about it? In a Arizona State University and Valley Colleges’ College Times story, Mike Meyer lays it out in a post featuring senior journalism student Chris Ly, seen in Ryan A. Ruiz’s photograph on the right.
In 2005, Ly was sued by the RIAA for illegally downloading music. He received a letter at his parents’ house from the RIAA informing him of the lawsuit. Initially, Ly didn’t believe the letter was real.
“I thought it was a joke,” he said. “You look at most of these things, and you just don’t think it’ll happen to you.”
Ly quickly learned that the lawsuit was no laughing matter when he called the phone number provided in the letter. The settlement the RIAA offered: about $4,000.
Ly said he had about 800 songs on his computer, half of which he downloaded from peer-to-peer file-sharing sites such as Kazaa, and half that had come from CDs he’d purchased. Ly said he forgot to turn off the file-sharing feature, which allowed other users to download his music as long as the program was running. He guessed that the lawsuit stemmed from file-sharing he did while living in Cholla Hall at ASU, but he was never contacted by ASU before or after receiving the letter.
Ly opted not to hire a lawyer and instead took out a student loan to settle the suit. He was also asked to remove the file-sharing program from his computer, which he’d already done, and delete all of the music files listed in the suit. Ly said he doesn’t know of any other students who have been sued by the RIAA. He was undecided on whether the current batch of students facing potential lawsuits should accept the settlement or try to fight it.
“It’s hard to say,” Ly said. “For a lot of students, I think it might be good to try to fight it, but for some students like me, who were in a situation where they couldn’t financially fight it, I think that it’s kind of hard for them to decide which way to go. I don’t really know if there’s even a good way to go about it.”
While [RIAA president Cary] Sherman characterizes file-sharing on college campuses as “extensive and disproportionately problematic,” Ly said that college students just make easy targets.
“I think it kind of sucks to target college students, especially since, if they’re in my position, they’re in no real financial position to fight this type of thing,” Ly said. “They don’t have the money to go about getting a lawyer. Most of them don’t have any idea what their rights are to fight this.”
Back to The Daily O’Collegian, “The RIAA’s tactic is a blatant attempt at circumventing the U.S. judicial system by scaring the accused students into submission before a rightful trial and using them as an example to other students who think about downloading music, which is on scale with the U.S. administration’s use of Guantanamo and war tribunals,” writes Dakota Ballard, going on:
While the Bush administration fought to be able to torture terrorism suspects, the RIAA fights to limit the fair use of digital media.
When these organizations treat everyone like a criminal, or even a possible criminal, they serve only to encourage the illegal behavior.
You’ll never have to deal with anti-piracy warnings or copyright protection software if you download an album off of the Internet. And the war on terrorism definitely hasn’t won the nation any friends.
If the RIAA isn’t careful, it will be faced with a long and uphill battle that will only end up alienating future generations of music fans. Additionally, the United States must be careful not to arouse and embolden future generations of terrorists with its actions.
Furthermore, in both the RIAA’s and the United States’ current conflicts, victory can never be absolute, as the groups fight against an abstract idea. Whether it’s music piracy or terrorism, you may be able to take down a few of the people that perform these actions, but you can never hope to completely terminate the actions.
There is one stark difference between the war on terror and the fight against music piracy, though. In the end, the United States has at least a benevolent cause for its actions in attempting to prevent people from getting hurt or killed.
On the other hand, the RIAA uses its guerilla tactics to terrify people that just want to listen to the new Justin Timberlake single, only to line the recording industry executives’ pocketbooks and protect their market shares.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
The Daily O’Collegian – RIAA’s war on music piracy parallels war on terror, March 7, 2007
incriminate yourself – RIAA college settlement plan, February 28, 2007
blackmail letter – RIAA’s student extortion letter, March 3, 2007
‘or else’ missives – Ohio U No 1 on RIAA p2p chart, February 23, 2007
The Collegian – RIAA lawsuits: Increase in lawsuits won’t stop downloads, March 7, 2006
working enthusiastically – Entertainent cartels vs US Students, October 6, 2006
every day – 1 billion songs a DAY shared online, March 8, 2007
College Times – Paying for Piracy, March 8, 2007
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
March 8th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Go here as well >
http://www.ndsuspectrum.com/opinion/07spring/3_09_07_opinion_riaa.html