Pay P2P file-sharing ‘fee’: RIAA plan for ISPs
RIAA News:- I’m pulling together posts for an RIAA retrospective going from 2002 to 2008. It’s going to take a while, but for now, here’s an elderly item written by my late friend Bill Evans.
In its latest dumb move, the RIAA wants to turn ISPs into unpaid corporate copyright cops.
Is that better or worse and trying to make them pay for downloads, do you think?
This p2pnet post dates back to February, 2003 »»»
[Long gone and unlamented RIAA boss] Hilary Rosen to ISPs: YOU pay for song-swaps – By Bill Evans
Hilary Rosen (right) says telecom companies and ISPs will pay up for giving customers access to free song-swapping sites.
The music industry is in a tailspin with global sales of CDs expected to fall six percent in 2003, its fourth consecutive annual decline. A major culprit, industry watchers say, is online piracy.
Now, it’s going after Internet service providers.
“We will hold ISPs more accountable,” said Hillary Rosen, chairman and CEO the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), in her keynote speech at the Midem music conference on the French Riviera.
“Let’s face it. They know there’s a lot of demand for broadband simply because of the availability (of file- sharing),” Rosen said.
As broadband access in homes has increased across the Western world, so has the activity on file- sharing services.
IMPOSSIBLE TO ENFORCE
The RIAA is a powerful trade body that has taken a number of file-swapping services, including the now defunct Napster, to court in an effort to shut them down.
Rosen suggested one possible scenario for recouping lost sales from online piracy would be to impose a type of fee on ISPs that could be passed on to their customers who frequent these file-swapping services.
Mario Mariani, senior vice president of media and access at Tiscali, Europe’s third largest ISP, dismissed the notion, calling it impossible to enforce.
“The peer-to-peer sites are impossible to fight. In any given network, peer-to-peer traffic is between 30 and 60 percent of total traffic. We technically cannot control such traffic,” he said.
Rosen’s other suggestions for fighting online piracy were more conciliatory.
She urged the major music labels, which include Sony Music, Warner Music, EMI, Universal Music and Bertelsmann’s BMG, to ease licensing restrictions, develop digital copyright protections for music, and invest more in promoting subscription download services.
Pressplay and MusicNet, the online services backed by the majors, plus independent legitimate services such as Britain’s Wippit.com, sounded somewhat optimistic about their longterm chances to derail free services such as Kazaa and Morpheus.
But they also acknowledged they cannot compete with the “free” players until the labels clear up the licensing morass that keeps new songs from being distributed online for a fee.
LEGAL STEP
Officials from Pressplay and MusicNet, which are in their second year in operation, declined to disclose how many customers they have.
“We haven’t really started yet,” said Alan McGlade, CEO of MusicNet, when asked about his subscriber base.
Michael Bebel, CEO of Pressplay, said his customers tally is in the tens of thousands. He added that the firm, backed by Universal and Sony, could expand into Canada in the first half of the year, its second market after the U.S. He didn’t have a timeframe for Europe.
Meanwhile, Kazaa and Morpheus claim tens of millions of registered users who download a wide variety of tracks for free.
Rosen hailed a recent U.S. court decision which ruled that Kazaa, operated by Australian-based technology firm Sharman Networks, could be tried in America, as an important legal step to halting the activities of file-sharing services.
“It’s clear to me these companies are profiting to the tune of millions and millions of dollars. They must be held accountable,” Rosen said.
Ho Ho Ho, eh? 
Jon Newton – p2pnet
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December 20th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
like you say, same old same old
December 20th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
They changing plan from “sue everyone” to “tax everyone”. What they think they are??? Music dictatorship/kings/mafiaa or similar?? If they will have unique skills and nobody else could produce music than such action could succeed. But looking present situation and little bit ahead music monopoly industry is dead ’cause everyone else has enough skills to produce cheaply enough content material to fill hungry ipods up.
December 20th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Will we soon be pulling everyone over to give them a ticket ‘cus we know they’re gonna speed anyway?
I create audio intellectual properties, upload them to an FTP site and they are downloaded by my clients who’ve paid for their use. …Are we all criminals? Why do I have to pay a tax to huge multi-national record conglomerates for the priviledge of conducting my business online?
December 20th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
I posted this in another thread, but I think it belongs here as well
Jon N ” And if you think you can willy-nilly cut off someone’s Internet service without a hearing, without due process, ”
That’s the key right there …
Due Process.
That’s what the RIAA are desperately trying to avoid.
If the ISP wrongly terminates your connection based on faulty or no evidence, then
who has to pay to initiate the suit ?
Why the customer of course.
This forces the customer to decide whether or not their meager resources are enough to
fight a multimillion dollar corporation ( the ISP ) with a large nest of highly paid
lawyers at their beck and call.
Sounds familiar.
Who thinks they can afford to fight ?
It’s a way to not only doge due process, but to shift the responsibility, the bill, and most important,
the BLAME to someone else.
Now who out there can afford to bring such a suit against an ISP ?
December 20th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Just lower your f**king prices you tossers. Also produce better music. Not rocket science really.
December 21st, 2008 at 8:49 am
if the RIAA wasn’t so intrested in enlarging their bit and fat asses and wallets while others that can’t sometimes afford to buy a decent cd from they’re favorite bands “probably” the prices on cd’s and dvd’s wouldn’t be so expensive and then there wouldn’t be a need of people having to resource to the web and the so-called piracy websites to get something.
i also blame the actual actors and songwriters from allowing them(RIAA) to receive a gross income on how many copies they sell toenlarge they’re wealth.
FIGHT THE BASTARD PIGS WHO ARE GETTING RICH ON THE COSTS OF CD’S AND DVD’S
December 21st, 2008 at 2:03 pm
actually abuse like that you file a CCTS complaint and then should a “slam” have occured a moneytary judgement of up to 1000$ paid by the ISP to the consumer can happen.
This is why the RIAA and MPAA in canada will have a hard time at this.
YOU need proof beyond a reasonable doubt and if all your movements are encrypted then where is such a proof?
so, then the isp pays you and its cause they were told by the riaa, then the ISP can sue the RIAA to get that money back as a indirect cause.
IN fact there is a little known law that effectively goes like this.
the mac milk gets bad cheese form a delivery truck that didnt refrigerate it properly.
in old times you the consumer sue the mac milk then they sue the truck owner.
Well someone got smart and said if it can be found ot be the truck guy then JUST sue him.
That means the riaa/mpaa open them selves up to class action lawsuits of misrepresentation amongst a myriad of small claims actions
which btw only cost you 75$ to initiate
December 21st, 2008 at 2:05 pm
P.S. it owuld be funny as hell to see 5000 lawsuits against the CRIA in canada , instead of the other way around.
look good on them
December 22nd, 2008 at 2:53 am
File a CCTS complaint?!?!
You gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’!
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I see where this is going, the MAFIAA is going to try and use MediaSentry phony evidence to send a bill for payment of the ‘offending’ copyrighted material, no proof needed, of course. First, notices to ISPs and just tack charges for all those ‘other’ undefined files that must be copyrighted by someone therefore we should get a cut.. somebody’s getting paid, don’t think this is above and beyond the prehistorical thinking that goes on in the music and movie industry.
Everyone already pays a mp3 tax on every blank cd sold on the planet. They will try this too.