Mavis Roy takes on the RIAA
p2pnet news view RIAA | P2P:- “[...] the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the major labels in the United States, has backed away from a nearly six-year campaign of litigation against individual file-sharers [...]”
The statement comes in a New York Times article. So must be true.
But it isn’t.
Ask Mavis Roy, .
“The music industry is singing a different tune to defend against illegal downloads, targeting Internet service providers instead of end users,” says the New Hampshire Union Leader, quoted by Recording Industry vs The People, going on:
“But the Recording Industry Association of America says pending lawsuits, including one involving a New Hampshire woman, will move forward.”
Student attorneys at the Consumer and Commercial Law Clinic of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord are acting for Mavis, accused of being another alleged “massive illegal distributor of copyright music”.
She’s accused of distributing 218 music files online, said p2pnet.
Well, clearly, the “devastated” multi-billion-dollar record labels would have to protect themselves against the likes of arch file sharer Mavis Roy.
Or Jammie Thomas, the single mother of two who’s about to undergo a second civil court trial to answer charges levelled at her by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA that she, too, is a massive online distributor of corporate copyrighted music.
Of the thousands of allegations the RIAA and Big 4 have laid against completely innocent men, women and children across America, Thomas’ case was the only one to actually make it through to a jury. And she’ll be tried again on March 9 because the judge who heard it first time around made a mistake in law.
Or Joel Tenenbaum, the Boston student who, backed by a team of Harvard law students led by professor Charles Nesson, is also fighting Big 4 charges that he’s a cold file sharing criminal, out to rob the hard-pressed record labels of their incomes by sharing music with other people.
Or ask lawyer Steve Robertson, a lawyer representing 11 RIAA victims and who’s scheduling a press conference to, “gather my clients together to put faces behind their continued battle against the bully”.
As p2pnet said in the story about Robertson, “You know how the RIAA has supposedly seen the light and isn’t suing Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG customers on behalf of Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG any more?
“That’s just Big 4 PR BS for media consumption. In fact, the RIAA is still sneaking around in the dark.”
‘They illegally download music on the Internet’
“When 15 college students recently visited the Tribune editorial board, we asked them if they had committed a certain crime,” said the Chicago Tribune, a respected mainstream newspaper quoted in a p2pnet post.
So, what crime would that be? – we asked.
They all, “eagerly pleaded guilty,” story Tribune stated unequivocally. “They illegally download music on the Internet.”
“Ah!” – we went on. “The crime of illegal downloading!
“Except it isn’t a crime. Neither is file sharing.
“Copyright infringement might come into it. But even that’s only a civil matter, although Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music, Sony BMG and their RIAA have spent billions of dollars convincing the likes of the Chicago Tribune it’s a ‘crime’ of a similar magnitude to rape and murder.”
p2pnet went on »»»
“The Recording Industry Association of America says 7.8 million U.S. households a month steal music online,” says the story. “That means singers, songwriters, musicians, producers and others don’t get compensated for their work.”
Actually, it means nothing of the sort.
Sharing does not equal stealing. No exchange of money is involved and no one, least of all the Big 4, has been permanently or temporarily deprived of something it, or they, used to own.
Nor has it caused “singers, songwriters, musicians, producers” to lose income.
Ask federal US federal judge James P. Jones who recently decided files shared by no means automatically equal sales lost online, or anywhere else.
Speaking of the labels, “They spend 90 percent of their time trying to keep me from doing what I want to do and 10 percent of their time trying to make it possible,” says Gerd Leonhard, author of ‘The Future of Music’,” in the NYT article.
“Music piracy causes $12.5 billion in losses each year, according to the association, citing a study by the Institute for Policy Innovation,” says the New Hampshire Union Leaderitem.
nstitute for Policy Innovation
I once described claims in the IPI study, also cited by Hollywood, that files shared equal sales as “deeply flawed” and “just so much hogwash”.
A Reader’s Write contributed by IPI boss Tom Giovanetti responded, “I love it when someone only gives a cursory scan to a press release and then thinks they can characterize an economic study as ‘deeply flawed’.”
“Why don’t you at least read the study and then tell us precisely how you think the study is flawed?” – he asked me. “Why don’t you show some sign of actually familiarizing youself with something before firing off a knee-jerk reaction?
“I challenge you to tell us, from an economic standpoint, how our study is ‘deeply flawed.’ Consider the gauntlet layed down.”
Actually, Tom, I did read it, I answered, going on »»»
But since you mention it, I particularly liked the bit where Stephen E. Siwek, the author, says:
“In the Motion Picture Piracy study, estimates of the global losses to the U.S. industry from motion picture piracy were available from the extensive piracy survey analysis conducted for the Motion Picture Association of America by L.E.K. Consulting.”
Is he referring to The New York Motion Picture & Media Industries: Piracy and the New York Economy (.pdf), prepared for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)?
It’s hard to say: the MPAA comes out with so many of these things. But if that’s the case, the spin is: it’s a definitive document accurately portraying losses incurred by Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney due to the ravages of ‘piracy,’ and quoted by the MPAA on its home page.
How accurate is it? Let’s just say statistics produced by Hollywood’s MPAA are generally as fanciful as RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) facts and figures.
In the RIAA (oops, IPI) study, Siwek goes on:
At this writing, no such comprehensive analysis [as the New York item?] of piracy exists for the recorded music industry. However, many of the underlying building blocks of such an analysis do exist in a variety of industry and trade publications.
For this study, the most important of these sources was 2006 Global Recording Industry in Numbers which is published by the International Federation of the Phonogram Industry (IFPI).
It’d be interesting to know who authored it because the IFPI is, of course, nought but another of the many and various enforcement units used by Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, the members of the Big 4 organised music cartel, to present ‘reports’ purpose-written to bolster Big 4 claims, and justify the lawsu9ts they’ve launched their own customers in a bid to: turn them into compliant consumers; and, gain control of online distribution.
In other words, Siwek is using music industry figures to support music industry claims.
And guess who wrote the MPAA’s Motion Picture Piracy study alluded to above?
Yinka Adegoke picked up our p2pnet post and wrote about it in the Reuters Mediafile, saying, “All those illegal music downloads don’t just harm the beleagured music industry, they also damage the wider U.S. economy, according to a new report.”
Further down, the story says:
The report has already been panned by some doubters who believe it was funded by the music industry.
But IPI spokeswoman Erin Fitch says the report was paid for by its “general support funds for Intellectual Property program”. Fitch says the thinktank’s policy is not to disclose its sponsors, though she says IPI, which was founded by former Congressman Dick Armey, has worked with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and could do so in the future.
Well, Yinka, I didn’t actually say I thought it was funded by the music industry. I merely observed:
Confidently expect to see this fulsome and overblown report repeated as incontrovertible fact ad nauseum, and at length and in detail, in the mainstream media, and by various bought-and-paid-for US congresspersons
But since you mention it …
And at the end of his ’study,’ Siwek says:
Economists Incorporated is grateful to the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) and its member associations for their support and assistance in the drafting of this report. In particular, we would like to thank the staff of the IIPA, including Eric H. Smith and Maria Strong, for their comments. The IIPA is a private sector coalition formed in 1984 to represent the U.S. copyright-based industries in bilateral and multilateral efforts to improve international protection and enforcement of copyrighted materials. These six member associations – the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the Business Software Alliance (BSA), the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the Independent Film & Television Alliance (I.F.T.A., formerly known as AFMA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)—represent over 1,300 U.S. companies producing and distributing materials protected by copyright laws throughout the world …….”
yada yada yada.
All of these outfits are owned by, and represent, heavily vested corporate interests.
But back to the IPI’s deeply flawed study, says another p2pnet reader:
Consider what this would mean if it were true: 12 billlion dollars and 300 million Americans. That means that every man, woman and child, every tiny baby, every 100 year old nursing home patient, every prisioner, every soldier OWES the record industry 40 bucks!
And thats just music. Surely the movie industry, software, and game producers could generate a similar report.
Then there are the lesser crybabies: books, phony handbags, duff Rolex watches, Chinese designer clothing, etc, etc., By the time everybody releases their reports, every last American OWES the “economy” several hundred bucks. This money would come right outa our pockets and into the coffers of ‘the economy’. So let’s bankrupt the nation for the sake of those poor starving cartels.
Isn’t that what their balony report boils down to?
Expect more inaccurate (to be kind) reports such as the one in the New York Times which states flatly that the Big 4 have, “backed away from a nearly six-year campaign of litigation against individual file-sharers”.
Meanwhile, the labels, “spend 90 percent of their time trying to keep me from doing what I want to do and 10 percent of their time trying to make it possible,” it has said Gerd Leonhard, author of ‘The Future of Music’.”
And of Mavis Roy, “The lawsuit brought by UMG Recordings, Interscope Records, Motown Record Co., and BMG Music” alleges she, “violated copyright infringement laws by downloading and distributing 218 audio files on April 24, 2007″.
“Violated copyright infringement laws,” eh? Wow! Violated!
But, Roy’s defense team wonders, how could that possibly be when she didn’t even have a computer in her house?
As always, stay tuned.
[The pic at top right is with apologies to Searchviews. Hope you don’t mind. 
]
Jon Newton – p2pnet
January , 2009
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January 28th, 2009 at 10:06 am
” how could that possibly be when she didn’t even have a computer in her house?”
this just gets better and better day by day. I feel sad that their litigation campaign is ending and their wont be many more of these screwups to laugh at. ….then again, if the tenenbaum case goes live on the net we will all have laughs for years to come.
January 28th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
the riaa should concentrate their legal crap on the guys selling fake copies on the streets and leave downloaders alone.
i’ve downloaded some music to replace music i lost due to scratched CD .. etc. is it a crime to do so if you have a physical copy to show?
and really a cd is just a copy, of a copy, of a copy….. right?
I think the music industry makes more copies than anyone, maybe they should sue themselves!