RIAA, Big Music disconnect
p2pnet news special | Music:- Regular p2pnet readers will recognize the name Robert Chapin.
Apart from his background in electronica DJ-ing and computer networking, he also runs Chapin Information Services and with that hat on, among other things, he uncovered a new security hole in Mozilla’s Firefox.
And like hundreds of millions of other people around the world, he’s also following the latest Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG fiasco.
Under it, they triumphantly hauled Jammie Thomas, a 30-year-old Minnesota mother, into court, the idea being to use her as an example of what can happen to people who refuse to buy Big 4 ‘product,’ and only Big 4 product.
Their scheme is, however, back-firing into their faces.
Says Chapin:
“For several years record companies remained unconvinced of the overall value as a promotional medium for their products, so they too joined the throng in fighting the idea. They thought people were less likely to buy a record if they could hear it for free. This fear was borne out by some figures which showed that urban areas were suffering a downturn in record sales. The larger record companies started taking legal steps and a series of lawsuits ensued.” *
If you think I’m quoting an article about the recent peer-to-peer (P2P) music sharing lawsuits, you couldn’t be more wrong. That paragraph was an explanation of the technological revolution that took place in the United States music industry during the 1930s. I’ve simply taken it out of context by deleting the words ‘radio’ and ‘disc jockey’.
At that time, the throng was an organization of performing artists, the medium radio, and the criminals radio DJs. They stood accused of violating copyrights by broadcasting music recordings with no license to do so. One case almost reached the U.S. Supreme Court when an appellate judge ruled against the plaintiff, “They have never copied his performances at all; they have merely used those copies which he and the RCA Manufacturing Company, Inc. made and distributed.”**
It goes without saying the recording industry thrived in the 67 years since that ruling. In retrospect, the idea that radio broadcasts would hurt record sales is as absurd as the idea that the Earth is flat.
Perhaps equally absurd is the idea that suing tens of thousands of pop music fans would benefit the music industry. There have been many more revolutions and precedents since 1940, however the parallels cannot be denied. Once again a new technology has cast doubt on some artists’ ability to sell recordings, and once again the recording companies have charged to their rescue waving lawsuits to maintain the status quo.
For the recording companies to make this mistake again after the first time is inexcusable, and their declining sales bare that out. But the real danger lies in the apparent disconnect between the recording companies and their customers.
Much like Ford Motor Co, they have realized far too late that their factories are making products that went out of style years ago.
Look how these dangers have given rise to anti-CD movements. When the P2P lawsuits began, many songs were shared on the Internet through Napster. It was a slow, inefficient system where low-quality music files could be traded with some success. Now after the rise and fall of more and more advanced systems, it is easier to download an entire CD than it is to purchase a single low-quality song over the Internet.
As long as the recording companies reject the latest distribution technologies, they will be continuously outstripped by pop music fans who can use the Internet to accomplish that distribution at almost no cost.
Where is the danger in that, you may wonder? The truth is, everyone involved in this issue still needs the recording companies. Somebody still has to make the recordings, and as long as the recording control lies within a recording contract, there are massive, untapped opportunities to profit from that control on the Internet.
Retail digital music websites, as I have attempted to make people aware, are an enormous liability to the entire music industry. The client-server retail model has several inherent disadvantages that make it inefficient, insecure, and as a result, expensive. P2P business models would solve most efficiency and spending problems, but what about security?
Let me phrase this as an ultimatum. I have seen P2P networking concepts that are years ahead of their time. There will come a fork in the road where those concepts are being developed by early adopters. It will be either the record companies embracing that technology, or it will be pop music fans who had their older sharing systems sued out of existence. These new networks are not being developed yet because there is no immediate demand for them. But one way or the other, the recording industry is going to create that demand in the near future.
The recent $220,000 verdict against an accused pop music fan is no surprise to me. It is upsetting because it will affect when and how people listen to music. But it is no surprise, considering the record companies were dealt several defeats and successes before the major verdict of 1940.
What is definitely surprising to me is the dangerous precedent set for the first time I am aware of, and unanimously by a jury, that it is illegal to make copyrighted works available on a P2P network without a license.
If this new interpretation of copyright law should be upheld in the future, mark my words, you will see the emergence of new distribution technologies the likes of which can only be seen on the drawing board today.
For the recording companies, time is running out.
History proves lawsuits might delay the inevitable, but I believe the status quo leads quickly to obsoletion.
* Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, 1999 by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton
** Matthew Lasar’s blog. June 29, 2007 http://www.lasarletter.net/drupal/node/424
(And Happy Thanksgiving to fellow Canadians 
)
Also See:
new security hole – Firefox password security hole, November 21, 2006
triumphantly hauled – Hit the RIAA and Big Music where it hurts!, October 5, 2007
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October 8th, 2007 at 8:26 am
Jon: “Under it, they triumphantly hauled Jammie Thomas, a 30-year-old Minnesota mother, into court, the idea being to use her as an example of what can happen to people who refuse to buy Big 4 ‘product,’ and only Big 4 product.”
While I despise what the RIAA is doing with their laswuit campaign, I detect some FUD here too. The music industry is *not* saying “…who refuse to buy Big 4 ‘product,’ and only Big 4 product.” They are saying they don’t want you to *share* their music for free. They say nothing about sharing music that isn’t under their copyright, as it should be.
Big difference, don’t you think? If we’re to win this war against them, then spreading BS at our end will only hinder it even more.
October 8th, 2007 at 8:52 am
Hi:
IMHO, the sue ‘em all campaign’s primary goal is to allow the Big 4 to gain total control of the Net as a distribution system for digital music downloads so they came ensure people by their ‘product,’ and only theirs.
They’ll never achieve that, of course. But they’re close to it offline and they want to get as near to it as they can online.
That’s the reality.
October 8th, 2007 at 10:41 am
anyone want to move in with me? i live in a free country and im good “enough” looking
preferably girl around 18-28, im not very picky..
nice apartment, 100Mbit/sec connection and all the music you could ever want.
ofc your allowed to share your payed music with your friends too! and i have alot of friends!
sadly if your friends live in the US you will ruin their lives forever if you share music with them.. so forget having friendships and doing social activeties over the net with people from US… but hey you will have me! ;D
October 8th, 2007 at 11:52 am
“The music industry is *not* saying “…who refuse to buy Big 4 ‘product,’ and only Big 4 product.” ”
They don’t say it but this is what they mean. Their problems is that the technology made them currently obsolete as distributor of music because the artist can distribute their music directly to the fan using internet. More and more artists are signing out of the 4 majors records company and either switch to indies or distribute their music themselves. And the preliminaries seem to indicate that this is working!
Since they show to us that they are a packs of low life parasites we as consumers are going to put them definitively out of business since many of us and in growing numbers decided not to feed these tapworms. You see we have the money and we decide who get it and who don’t.
I can not wait until they die and until we can rebuild a new music industry with good people trully concerned about art instead of money and BS marketing.
We know that when the dice are not piped money will folow automaticaly because it always did.
October 8th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
“If this new interpretation of copyright law should be upheld in the future, mark my words, you will see the emergence of new distribution technologies the likes of which can only be seen on the drawing board today.”
Actually such technology is already there on the net. It is already fairly functional enven if few people are using them. And this is only the beginning!. Good luck for the RIAA rats to find out what it is shared and who is sharing. Also good luck to stop people from using these technologies since these applications can use any protocol and display any signature.
And as fare as trying to collapse existing p2p network by discouraging people form sharing with law suit, it will never work because the math indicate that you have to reduce the number of source by more than 98% to start decreasing availibility significantly.
October 8th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
The RIAA had success with closing down Napster because it was centralized and there for under the control of the host.
What they did not foresee was the springing up of decentralized as a direct result of that lawsuit action. Napster went under and up popped more file sharing sites than they knew how to handle. Every time they’ve been successful, it has created this responce. Wack-a-mole isn’t a sustainable model.
What they have been successful at is creating the worse public relations campaign and disaster imaginable. I won’t purchase big media’s offerings. I went on boycott when this sort of mentality started and will continue it for life if necessary without a qualm. I’m not the only one out there with this idea. If the thought that sue’em all is going to bring the masses back, I shudder to think of the idiots that run big media will do if they ever get into government offices.
Every case that is a sue’em all has friends. All those friends you can be sure know the situation that brought about the troubles for their friends. It’s so bad that the RIAA decided it could not stand the light of public display for lawsuits on the main pages of national media and instead went to local filings in hopes of some sort of damage control on negative publicity. All that has done has turned the people at the grass roots level against them. This will be far harder to recover from because of the negative publicity going down to the very most basic level of their customers. So sue a music lover, who ceases to ever buy again “product” and who will continue to bad mouth the industry for the rest of their lives as a walking advertisement recommending against doing business with them ever is an image I somehow fail to see as being of any benefit to big media. But I do see it as being like a hydra in spreading ill will and as a result continuing loss of sales at ever greater frequency.