p2pnet.net news:- The multi-million-dollar campaign, launched by Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA to compel American online music lovers to abandon independent download sites in favour of those backed and supplied by the Big 4, is a failure.

“Have the RIAA sue ‘em all lawsuits persuaded you to stop sharing?” - p2pnet asked in an online poll, which we believe is the first of its kind.

NO !!!, shouted 1,013 of the 1,077 responses.

Millions of file sharing “criminals” with Net accounts, some of them very young children, are causing “devastation” and terrible hardships to the Big 4 and their contracted artists and industry workers at all levels, says the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), and similar Big 4 units around the world.

Branding file sharers as thieves, the RIAA, BPI (British Phonographic Industry), IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry) , CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America), and so on, assert files shared or swapped equal sales lost and, therefore, drastic steps must be taken to preserve their masters’ bottom lines.

But, “Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates,” said Felix Oberholzer and Koleman Strumpf in their 2004 The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis. This year, they said:

Downloads have an effect on sales that is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Our estimates are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the decline in music sales during our study period.

Every now and then ‘independent’ shotgun surveys commissioned directly by the labels, or outfits close to them, emerge. They aim to prove Big 4 efforts to turn online music lovers away from the burgeoning independent sites and services, and free p2p networks, into the arms of the skeletal corporate download businesses, are having significant effects.

Many commissioned polls are at pains to make the point they’re ‘randomised’. That’s to say, the pollsters have no way of knowing who they’re talking to, if any of their respondents have any direct (or otherwise) interest and/or knowledge of the matter at hand, or even if the answers reflect reality based on actual experience. Yet, these surveys are always quoted as being representative and accurate.

I decided to run a poll asking readers, and people who landed on the survey from directly relevant links on other sites, what they thought of the RIAA sue ‘em all campaign. I also asked if they believed a number of statements made by the RIAA, using direct quotes from the RIAA sites to pose the questions.

I included a box with the questions based on RIAA statements so respondents could add their own observations. The replies are included with the raw data, which I’m making available for free under a Creative Commons license 3.0. They’re in a compressed zip file and can be used in an Access database. The zip also includes a Visual FoxPro version, and a text version for Excel, although the long “comment” fields will be lost when importing the data into Excel.

Below are the main results from the Sultans of Spin survey. If you use and of it, we’d appreciate a note with a link.

For now, according to the RIAA, “Each sale by a pirate [or file shared] represents a lost legitimate sale, thereby depriving not only the record company of profits, but also the artist, producer, songwriter, publisher, retailer ….” In other words, the Big 4 want the world to believe a person who bought a counterfeit disc or downloaded music would otherwise have bought a Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG CD and that their failure to do so represents billions of dollars in actual and genuine losses. The assertion is patently ridiculous and yet it’s repeated over and over in the mainstream media without question.

Says one comment:

Most of the people i know who have downloaded music, have downloaded music they would never have bought, mostly because they have never heard it. It is really expensive to dish out 15 dollars for something you have never heard and can not take back if you don’t like it. These same people have bought complete albums of artists they would have never heard before if it was not for peer to peer. One friend of mine is a huge Van Halen fan, all because he downloaded the song “jump” a few years ago. because of this he has purchased about 5 Van Halen albums, and from hearing his music, I have purchased 7. Thats 12 albums sold because of one downloaded track.

The RIAA, “Works to build a positive environment in which to create and distribute,” says another claim, which evinced:.

Payola scandals, lawsuits against your own consumers, extortion, lawsuits against children, telling college students to drop out of school to pay for their lawsuits, making the same generic pop music over and over again to rip off young children with an album that has one hit song and the rest is filler…How do you even try to say they build a positive environment in which to create and distribute music?

A third RIAA declaration says, “Technology initiatives of record companies and policy initiatives coordinated by the RIAA are working toward a seamless, interconnected world for music fans.” Says a respondent:

A “seamless, interconnected world” would mean that, once a person pays for a song, they would have the right AND ability to convert that song into any format(s) they choose, and store/play it on any equipment they choose, now and in the future. whereever and whenever they like, as often as they like, without ever paying for it again. THAT world is the antithesis of what record companies want… if it were up to them, all music would be rented for a single playback, and we’d have to pay up each and every time we listened, and we could never have more than one copy at a given time unless we coughed up more dough.

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THE SULTANS OF SPIN - final results, as of April 21, 2007

Number of accesses: 3,860
Number of responses: 1,108

Do you share files online?
Total Responses: 1,080
Yes - 69.1% (746)
No - 30.9% (334)

Have the RIAA sue ‘em all lawsuits persuaded you to stop sharing?
Total Responses: 1,077
Yes - 5.9% (64)
No - 94.1% (1,013)

How do you rate your chances of you becoming an RIAA victim?
Total Responses: 1,078
Guaranteed, if I keep on sharing - 1.9% (20)
High - 2.5% (27)
Medium - 10.5% (113)
Low - 50.4% (543)
Zero, even if I keep on sharing - 34.8% (375)

It’s been said the likelihood of any on person becoming an RIAA victim is like becoming a Lotto millionaire, or being struck by lightning.
Total Responses: 1,081
Agree - 69.3% (749)
Disagree - 30.7% (332)

The RIAA claims file sharing is “devastating” the music industry.
Total Responses: 1,081
Agree - 9.3% (100)
Disagree - 90.7% (981)

The RIAA claims file sharing is causing tremendous hardship to music industry workers, and huge losses to contracted artists.
Total Responses: 1,082
Agree - 7.4% (80)
Disagree - 92.6% (1,002)

Does your school give you instruction on IP (Intellectual Property) law?
Total Responses: 1,036
Yes - 18.2% (189)
No - 81.8% (847)

If it doesn’t, do you think it should?
Total Responses: 1,016
Yes - 39.7% (403)
No - 60.3% (613)

Do you know anyone who’s received an RIAA subpoena?
Total Responses: 1,078
Yes - 8.3% (90)
No - 91.7% (988)

Says the RIAA: Though it would appear that record companies are still making their money and that artists are still getting rich, these impressions are mere fallacies.
Total Responses: 1,076
True - 11.4% (123)
False - 88.6% (953)

Says the RIAA: Each sale by a pirate [or file shared - our insertion] represents a lost legitimate sale, thereby depriving not only the record company of profits, but also the artist, producer, songwriter, publisher, retailer, … and the list goes on.
Total Responses: 1,078
True - 11.0% (119)
False - 89.0% (959)

Says the RIAA: To artists, “copyright” means the chance to hone their craft, experiment, create, and thrive. It is a vital right, and over the centuries artists, such as John Milton, William Hogarth, Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens, have fought to preserve that right.
Total Responses: 1,046
True - 35.7% (373)
False - 64.3% (673)

Says the RIAA: Everything that the RIAA is active on - fostering a viable music marketplace online, preventing piracy, fighting censorship - is based on one premise: It all starts with the music and the music starts with the artist.”
Total Responses: 1,046
True - 16.5% (173)
False - 83.5% (873)

The RIAA: Supports the First Amendment rights of artists.
Total Responses: 1,021
True - 21.3% (217)
False - 78.7% (804)

The RIAA: Fights to preserve freedom of speech.
Total Responses: 1,032
True - 9.7% (100)
False - 88.5% (913)

The RIAA: Works to build a positive environment in which to create and distribute music.
Total Responses: 1,038
True - 5.0% (52)
False - 95.0% (986)

The RIAA says: RIAA leader Mitch Bainwol has, “helped revitalize a coalition of music organizations that now often work together on variety of industry issues, such as anti-piracy strategies or advocating a level playing field for digital music distribution models”.
Total Responses: 992
True - 20.2% (200)
False - 79.8% (792)

The RIAA says: Bainwol has, “strengthened artist relations and devised programs to promote and recognize emerging digital formats”.
Total Responses: 998
True - 12.3% (123)
False - 87.7% (875)

Says the RIAA: On behalf of its member companies, the RIAA works to protect the value of music.
Total Responses: 1,023
True - 15.1% (154)
False - 84.9% (869)

Says the RIAA: Technology initiatives of record companies and policy initiatives coordinated by the RIAA are working toward a seamless, interconnected world for music fans.
Total Responses: 1,015
True - 6.5% (66)
False - 93.5% (949)

Click here for the raw data, available for free under a Creative Commons license 3.0. If you use this, we’d appreciate a note saying where and how.

How valid are these results? Not very, said one well-known online personality who’s generally sympathetic to the plight of corporate victims. He stated:

I think of it as very flawed as a survey, and as something that will be trivial to discredit. I, too, have an intuitive belief that P2P lawsuits aren’t scaring off file-sharers, but I’m not willing to declare this to be true based on a survey of the kind of people who have self-indentified as activists who also want this to be true.

The majority of file-sharers have no political consciousness; don’t read [his blog] or P2PNet, haven’t heard of Slashdot. The people the RIAA want to scare can’t be reached by putting a poll on your blog. They can only be reached through the kind of credible, randomized sampling techniques employed by real opinion survey outfits.

I believe this person, whose views I normally respect, is wrong on all counts.

Eric Garland runs Big Champagne, one of the most respected media measurement companies with a special interest in peer-to-peer statistics. he told me:

We’re not in the survey business ourselves, as you know Jon. On the contrary, we focus solely on what people do (not what they say they do) and what we can observe directly because, as you’ve quoted me saying previously, we just don’t see that surveys in this area (online media, P2P, up/downloading habits) are empirically reliable.

Nonetheless, people love web polls and they are enormously popular/entertaining. People love to debate them endlessly and they always will. If you want your poll taken very seriously by those on all sides of the debate, I suppose you’re best off hiring one of the Big Names in survey work to conduct it - even if you do, I’ll take pot shots at the result, because, as I say I am wary of the answers regardless of who’s asking the questions.

Cheers! And thanks to everyone who took part. And all the best ….

Jon Newton - p2pnet

Slashdot it!

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!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 10:58 am and is filed under RIAA News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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