RIAA ’sue ‘em all’ campaign, 5 years on
p2pnet news view P2P | RIAA News:- “If the goal is to reduce file sharing, it’s a failure.”
That’s EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) lawyer Fred von Lohmann on the efforts of Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG and their RIAA to use the US civil legal system to terrorize people into abandoning P2P filesharing.
It comes in an excellent Wired story by David Kravets which says it’s now five years since the Big 4’s RIAA first launched its bizarre sue ‘em all marketing campaign against the Big 4’s own customers.
p2pnet was one of the first sites to run regular posts on the RIAA’s depredations against families across America, and the only one to point out how the entertainment cartel-inspired Joint Committee of Higher Education and Entertainment Communities was (and still is) used to turn US schools into corporate music marketing divisions and enforcement units, funded by taxpayers and using teachers and administrators as unpaid stuff.
Now, approaching 40,000 men, women and even young children have been on the wrong end of subpoenas initiated by the Big 4.
The labels claim they’re only trying to protect their investments — that files shared equal sales lost, an assertion roundly and efficiently dismissed in a number of authoritative studies.
The truth is: the multi-million-dollar campaign was launched not to stop file sharing, but to enable Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US) to gain complete and total control of who distributes music online, and how they do it.
Behind the eight ball
Says Wired »»»
When the first round of lawsuits were filed on Sept. 8, 2003 — targeting 261 defendants around the country — it was a hairpin turn from the RIAA’s previous strategy of going after services like Napster, RIAA president Cary Sherman said at the time. “It is simply to get peer-to-peer users to stop offering music that does not belong to them.” The goal in targeting music fans instead of businesses was “not to be vindictive or punitive,” says Sherman. Today, the RIAA — the lobbying group for the world’s big four music companies, Sony BMG, Universal Music, EMI and Warner Music — admits that the lawsuits are largely a public relations effort, aimed at striking fear into the hearts of would-be downloaders. Spokeswoman Cara Duckworth of the RIAA says the lawsuits have spawned a “general sense of awareness” that file sharing copyrighted music without authorization is “illegal.”
“Think about what the legal marketplace and industry would look like today had we sat on our hands and done nothing,” Duckworth says in a statement. (The RIAA declined to be interviewed for this story.)
That’s easy. If the labels have been willing to enter 21st digital century as friendly competitors instead of venal sole owners, their shareholders would now be downloading the dollars by the bucket in every minute of every day.
Instead, dividends are only a shadow of what they might have been and the corporate labels are well and truly behind the eight ball, having shredded their credibility and single-handedly created a brand new consumer class of people who want absolutely nothing to do with the Big Music, or anything or anyone associated with it.
Kravets continues »»»
Casey Lentz, a 21-year-old former San Francisco State student, is among those caught in the RIAA’s PR campaign.
“They’re harassing me nonstop,” says Lentz, who’s been trying to settle her RIAA case, but can’t afford a lawyer. “I wasn’t the one who downloaded the music. It was a shared computer with my roommates and my friends. They want $7,500 for 10 songs.”
“I told them I only had $500 in my bank account. And they said ‘no way,’” she says.
But the story also has Ray Beckerman, the New York lawyer who’s probably been defending RIAA victims for longer than anyone else, saying, “There are still very few people fighting back as far as the litigation goes and they settle”; and, “It costs more to hire a lawyer to defend these cases than take the settlement,” agrees Lory Lybeck who, with RIAA victim Tanya Andersen, fought the Big 4 enforcement unit to a stand-still and is now in the middle of a prospective class-action against the RIAA.
“That’s an important part of what’s going on,” he says in the Wired story. “The recording industry is setting a price where you know they cannot hire lawyers. It’s a pretty well-designed system whereby people are not allowed any effective participation in one of the three prongs in the federal government.”
P2P = People to People
It’s the same everywhere. Companies and rich individuals can, and do, sue ordinary people with impunity in all kinds of legal disputes, knowing there’s no way defendants can match corporate legal and financial resources, or even begin to defend themselves adequately on level playing fields.
Kravets goes on to point out the RIAA’s only ‘victory’, against Minnesota mother Jammie Thomas, has turned out to be hollow, with Michael Davis, the judge who heard it, “expected any day to declare a mistrial”.
But, he adds, “The recording industry could try to prove, through forensic examination, that the shared files were pirated to begin with, i.e., that the defendant infringed copyright law by downloading the music, before sharing it again. It’s also possible the courts will find that — as the RIAA has argued — downloads by the RIAA’s investigators can be considered infringement by the file sharer; digital rights advocates counter the recording industry should not be able to pay investigators to make downloads of its own music, and then declare them unauthorized copies.”
And while the arguments go on, the most important element in the scenario is, as usual, being ignored — the people.
How many men, women and children have been turned off and turned away by the actions of the Big 4 not only in North America, but elsewhere in the world?
How much of the decline in corporate music sales is down not to increasing interest in games, online activities, and so on, but to the fact former ‘consumers’ just aren’t buying corporate product, any more, because they’ve lost all respect for the companies and everything they stand for?
Lost all respect. Is the phrase too strong? Or is it strong enough?
How effective are the actual cases against file sharers
So far, there’ve been no studies documenting precisely what effect the civil lawsuits have had on the music buying public.
It’d make an interesting project.
Meanwhile, how effective are the cases against file sharers?
Last spring I ran what I believe was the first, and is still the only, poll of its kind.
There were 1,077 responses from p2pnet readers to questions asking, among other things, “Have the RIAA sue ‘em all lawsuits persuaded you to stop sharing?”
No, said 1,013 of the answers.
That’s pretty definitive, I’d say.
Have things altered much since then?
I doubt it.
Meanwhile, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world,” said Margaret Mead, adding:
“Indeed – it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Jon Newton – p2pnet
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September 5th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I haven’t purchased a new album nor song in years. Don’t intend to either. The reasons are a multitude.
One is that I am on boycott. When sue’em all started that ended the consideration of new music or even old music to be bought.
They haven’t learned that DRM is not acceptable and as I customer I expect more for my money than buying what is the equivalent of air. We’ve already seen what happens when the licensing server decides to go belly up and what happens to your music that is infected with DRM.
The enforcement agencies are the worse PR that the labels could have possibly dreamed up. I don’t hate those organizations, that is directed at the source that feeds them, the majors themselves.
I have had a long time to buy what I wanted from the market. Covers and rereleases aren’t showing me new material from disbanded groups but rather sometimes one song new and a rehash of what I already own. I am not going to pay the prices they want for a single song. This practice has contributed to the cherry picking mentality that exists to support sites such as iTunes. Another item going directly to the heart of sales for the majors. No one wants one good song and a ton of garbage in the form of filler. The day of the single is back because of this practice.
I can’t remember the last time I heard a new album on the radio in it’s entirety. There is no interest where there is no putting the goods out for sampling. What the labels in their fear of the internet haven’t learned is that trusting the customer to want better quality is a necessity if they want new or repeat business. In radioland, the replay is king with the same songs playing over and over, every hour. Nothing new means no interest in buying something.
Made artists aren’t cutting it. They lack the long term appeal to be consistent interesting in musical terms. The top 10 hit no longer has staying power. No one wants that old hit, two years later.
…and finally, we as customers like the good deal. It’s called value for the money. There is no value in the digital download with a lack of quality in bit rate. There is no value in the price. In fact it is far overpriced. I would rather have a game that entertains again and again, rather than over priced music that has little staying power.
In order for me to return to being a customer, they will have to win me back. As long as the sue’em alls go on, that will never happen for life. After sue’em alls end, only then will they have the chance to begin winning me back and that will take some doing.
September 6th, 2008 at 12:00 am
ONE WORD
THEY FAILED.
By giving it publicity, by sueing little kids, by sueing gran mas and dead people, they have all ensured an entire generation that HATES them and has said i won’t pay the fines or the court settlement , place me in jail.
We can then in jail with our buddies learn more criminal behaviour so as to BETTER ourselves. Yes great system.
September 6th, 2008 at 12:08 am
7500$ in canada as a fine would or could mean 2 years in prison MAX for non payment and generally you get hlaf that time.
ALSO would section 12 charter violation of cruel and unusual punishment be in order even for that fine, it might and this is one fo the major reasons this copyright bill WILL DIE in canada. I as i have said and dead serious about “turning my self in, with 40-50 dvdripped pre 1958 xvids, this will garner me a 20,000 fine per each violation, for a total about 8-10 million in fines and a maximum jail time of 1 million days in jail or effectively life in prison , for stuff that the copyright expired , and because hollywood wants DRM ( AKA the new word is TPM to be on everything and they get control)
This is also as i get the word out why the so called scene is outting tons a these and to those involved i thank you.
YOU MAY HELP in the future to stop this dumb law.
With busts of pirates that sell stuff and coutnerfeiters at the border do we in canada really need a new law and the answer is no, ONLY GREEDY PEOPLE NEED to make more.
17$ pop and popcorn and a 10$ movie
YA greedy bastards, I am surprised the some of these executives that work at such places are not WACKED mob style.
September 6th, 2008 at 12:09 am
About artists whining aobut not getting enough cash, go get a real job then your industry is telling you that
WERE NOT GOING TO PAY IT
NO
WERE NOT GOING TO PAY IT
NO
WERE NOT GOING TO PAY IT ….ANY MORE……
September 8th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Hmm, is it “working”.
Let me see:
1. Prior to the “Sue “em All” campaign, the RIAA etc. and their predecessors were able to hoodwink the vast majority — including legislators — into turning an 11-year monopoly intended to advance “the useful arts and sciences” into a century-long subsidy for publishers and record labels. As for the real artists — the ones who actually PERFORMED the music — “screw ‘em — it was “work for hire”.
Nowadays, there’s a significant — and ever-growing — number of people and organizations who are questioning not just how long “copyright” and other “intellectual monopolies” should be — but whether any such notions as “intellectual property” are justifiable AT ALL.
2. Before the “Sue ‘Em All” campaign”, people — musicians and consumers alike — were seemingly tolerant of anything. Payola, artists screwed over via “work for hire” etc.
Now, you have millions of people — at the very least — planetwide who honestly want to see the RIAA and it’s member corporations destroyed, and the broken remnants scattered to the winds. From Valenti’s mindless ranting about how the VCR was equivalent to the Boston Strangler, all the way down to their latest “Captain Copyright”….nobody — not even those bending over backwards to apologize for their antics — is even TRYING to make the RIAA look “clean” anymore.
3. Before the “Sue ‘em All” campaign, pretty much the only people who bothered to be “corporate watchdogs” were disregarded as “left-wing nuts”. Now, people from all walks of life are getting DAMN good and fed up with watching disabled single mothers and DEAD MEN being harassed and bankrupted for allegedly “stealing” something which — barring years of aggressive beind-the-scenes lobbying and manipulation of government — would mostly not be regarded as “property” in the first place — if it was 11 years old, or more.
But then again, maybe we should all just “grow a pair and learn to compete”.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:58 am
A superb read. Thanks for the Wired link, Jon.