p2pnet - rss feed: The RIAA university lament
p2pnet.net news:- “We simply cannot afford to write off a generation of college music fans,” says RIAA president Cary Sherman [right]. “Because we know that some audiences - particularly campus music downloaders - can sometimes be impervious to even the most compelling educational messages [threats] or legal alternatives [other threats].”
A little while back, “Years ago, college students were our best customers,” he said. “Now they’re among our worst customers.”
The first quote comes in a story in the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Royal Purple News, which goes on:
Dan Waterson, 19-year-old University of Wisconsin-Whitewater business student, never thought he would be busted for illegal file sharing. Waterson, like many college students across the nation, felt safe and out of the reach of the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) long-arms.
His feelings of safety were trampled when he was contacted by ResNet, the Internet network regulators for Residence Life. He was e-mailed because two songs, ‘London Bridge’ by Fergie and ‘Crazy’ by Gnarles Barkley, were reported in a piracy notice and indicated Waterson’s IP address as a location of illegally shared files.”
Crazy made pop history in April last year as Britain’s first number one song based solely on downloads.
The second quote came in p2pnet. It continued, “the RIAA is again running wild through the US school system, sending out what it calls ‘pre-litigation’ letters to college students across America, ordering them to pay a ’settlement’ amount. Or else.
“In their most recent attack on the people who used to be their best customers, the Big 4 music cartel sent out another 405 blackmail letters to 23 universities and is now promising to send “hundreds” more every month, says AP.
“This harks back to the days when the RIAA routinely fired subpoenas at men, women and even 12-year-old children every month.”
Is the RIAA effort paying off? - the story asks:
Is it making an impression on file sharing or file sharers? Not in the slightest. In fact, the numbers of people using the p2p networks and independent online services and sites, rather than those backed and supported by the corporate music industry, are growing
“There are nearly ten million people using only the most popular networks at any given time (to say nothing of private, invitation only, small group sharing etc.) and there are - very conservatively speaking - more than a billion files a month,” BigChampagne ceo Eric Garland told p2pnet recently.
He went on:
“The IFPI and RIAA project the volume of downloads to be far greater than that (estimates approaching 3 billion/month), but we do not know the basis of these projections.
“We have observed no decreases in file sharing activity. On the contrary, the aggressive growth in popularity of BitTorrent clients (and increases in gnutella users by way of Limewire et al) demonstrate very much the opposite.
“Proportionally, the growth rate in file sharing of film and television (and other multimedia) now exceeds that of popular music. We have observed no net decline in music, and music remains the most popular entertainment on P2P networks.”
Garland puts the number of downloads at perhaps three billion a month. However, a new IDC white paper says it’s probably more like one billion a day.
Twenty-eight percent of the students surveyed in a University of Richmond survey said they don’t believe record companies suffer as a result of illegal downloading, “which translates to a more than 75 percent of college students agreeing that peer-to-peer sharing damages the recording industry,” says Royal Purple.
p2pnet’s Sultans of Spin reader survey, slated to end tomorrow, says: “The RIAA claims file sharing is ‘devastating’ the music industry”.
Of 982 responses (as of 12:32 PM PST) 9.0% (88) agreed and 91.0% (894) disagreed.
“The RIAA claims file sharing is causing tremendous hardship to music industry workers, and huge losses to contracted artists,” said another ‘agree/disagree’ element.
Agree 7.4% (73) - Disagree 92.6% (911)
And Do you share files online? - asked the first question
Total Responses: 982
Yes - 68.7% (675)
No - 31.3% (307)
Have the RIAA sue ‘em all lawsuits persuaded you to stop sharing? - asked the second
Total Responses: 979
Yes - 6.3% (62)
No - 93.7% (917)
We’ll be releasing the questions, answers and raw data under CC license this weekend.
Also See:
Royal Purple News - RIAA delivers ‘black spot’ to music pirates, April 18, 2007
solely on downloads - Crazy makes download history, April 3, 2006
p2pnet - Students ‘worst customers’: RIAA, March 23, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by governBryan Adams slams Net radio hikement restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the endSurvey: How Did Copyright Infringement Become Equated with Robbery? (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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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!
April 19th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
As long as the Avrl Lavigne’s of this world are buying up multi-million dollar homes in the LA area, it’s pretty hard to take the riaa’s ranting “their losing money” seriously.
April 19th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
.
April 20th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
I believe she is with Nettwerk - who pulled out of the CRIA last year
April 24th, 2007 at 12:44 am
Crap like the RIAA lawsuits and other reasons is why I continue to download music of p2p sites. As far as I am concerned, they are not worthy of my business. And as a side note about pressuring collages to give them student information, they better not decide to go after Virginia Tech for their faulty lawsuits. Those poor kids have been through enough shit as it is.