Big Music terror tactics
p2pnet.net News View:- Almost on the eve of the hearing in which the members of the Big Four record label cartel will once again try to browbeat a panel of US judges into overturning a ruling they don’t like, their misnomered RIAA is victimizing another 753 people.
But consider these five points:
I The cartel is using its Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to bamboozle the media into thinking it’s hard-pressed because of p2p file sharing, and trying to use the American legal system to blackmail people into buying ‘product,’ as it calls the music it’s trying to sell. Yet only one member of the cartel (Warner) is actually American. The others are based in France (UMG), Britain (EMI), Japan and Germany (Sony BMG).
2 Not one of the 9,176 American men, women and children so far ‘sued’ by the cartel has ever had his or her case tried in an open court. Those being hammered under Big Music’s terror tactics are all ordinary people. There’s no way on earth any of them can even begin to meet the financial and legal resources of the multi-billion-dollar music industry. The cartel knows this, which is why it always makes its victims an offer they can’t refuse: ‘Settle out of court and we’ll go away”. Settlement sums average out to around $3,000. That’s chump-change to the industry, but a fortune to many of the families forced to pay it. But it buys the labels the means to imply they’ve successfully sued thousands of people for sharing music online when in reality, no one has yet been before a judge.
3 Big Music has never been able to show how 1, or 10 or even 1,000 downloads equal a single lost sale. In fact, in The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales, Felix Oberholzer-Gee of the Harvard Business School and Koleman S. Strumpf of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill say even under a worst-case scenario, “it would take 5,000 downloads to reduce the sales of an album by one copy”.
4 The RIAA says it’s fighting the good fight in the ‘war’ against p2p and file sharers. But p2p is here to stay and the ‘war’ is all in the minds of the many and various components of the software and entertainment industries. New technologies always threaten the old, established ones whose owners do everything they can to maintain the status quo. As Cherry Lane Digital ceo Jim Griffin said recently, the labels, “cling to their pursuit of this notion of control and calling those who do not comply thieves, and in doing so they leave billions on the table that should be divided fairly amongst creators and rights holders.” Moreover, consumers are customers again, and thanks to the Net and p2p communications, they have options never open to them before. They, and not the corporations, have the power of control. It’s called freedom of choice.
5 According to the RIAA, its sue ‘em all campaign is making a significant impact on file sharing. That is, however, nonsense and various academic and other studies (including a recent Organization for Economic Development and Co-operation (OEDC) report) prove the contrary is true. Far from being intimidated by the RIAA, more and more people are sharing files every day. Big Champagne is a research firm specializing in p2p network activities. Its statistics say that globally, on average, in February last year, 6,831,366 people were logged onto the p2p networks at any given moment, and that in the US, the figure was 4,039,989. The same figures for February, 2005, show this has risen substantially to 8,524,938 globally, and 6,183,636 for the US.
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See:-
browbeat a panel of US judges - MGM v Grokster briefs: one site, p2pnet, March 1, 2005
another 753 people - RIAA sues another 753 file sharers, p2pnet, March 1, 2005
they can’t refuse - Silenced by Big Music, p2pnet, February 6, 2005
single lost sale - Does a Free Download Equal a Lost Sale?, New York Times, November 21, 2004
notion of control - Evelyn and the RIAA, p2pnet, February 5, 2005
(OEDC) report - P2p file sharing is increasing, p2pnet, January 4, 2005
March 2nd, 2005 at 4:33 pm
Has anyone ever determined how many of these 10000 people were actually identified? Since they were sued as “John Doe” until their id could be determined I’m assuming many never were identified. So if all were not id”d and not all of those id’d actually settled, perhaps the sue-em-all stratigy isnt working as well as it appears. Naturally the music guys want the number to appear large, just like the unsubstantiated “loss” file sharing causes.
March 2nd, 2005 at 9:00 pm
Good article, but I’ve been reading about it for years. If the facts are so blantant to us, why are the courts so blind to the facts? Can it all be blamed on corruption (judge buying)? At what point will the courts fight for the common (wo)man? I’m hoping that the Groster case will bring some issues to light. However, whether Groster wins or losses, consumers loose.
March 3rd, 2005 at 2:29 am
I cannot find a proper thread for this, SO I ask you.
I recently started an itunes account so my brother could redeem his “free songs”. The first thing i did was download Moby sampler that was free since it was advertising his new album. I did this to test it out and farmiliarize myself with the system. I then clicked pepsi, redeem free song, put in the code, and it gave me one song credit. I then purchased a song, and it said my card would not be charged. well on my online banking statement, they charged me $1.00. Does anyone know if I missed the disclaimer that they charge $1.00 to “test” the CC#. If not, and i was forced to put CC# on their site in order to redeem “free song”, and I got charged anyway, I fully plan on suing them for my $1.00 plus pain and agrivation. lol
Anyone?
March 3rd, 2005 at 4:18 am
this is your fault for even bothering to redeem a drm’ed song for free..
lol
you should have just downloaded it off the net.. and if you got sued say you were making fair use of your free download to get one without the DRM and the request for a credit card number.
whenever i update itunes i reset the preferences to remove all traces of their music store from my itunes gui.. it’s a nice player/ripper.. but the store is a sell-out.
I really wish they’d dump their strange bedfellow over at apple and reintegrate the capability to webcast like they used to.
March 3rd, 2005 at 5:16 am
well to be honest with you, my father liked the idea of giving my brother (which still lives with him), the opportunity to get some more music, but he does not want him with P2P software on the puter at their house. and since he practically ownes stock in Pepsi, he has collected at least 100 caps so far. He is only 16 and got into a lot of toruble with his last p2p software.
March 25th, 2005 at 10:55 pm
Long live the technology but lets have it in the hands of the owners of the content, not pretenders building massive businesses out of someone elses property and duping people into thinking it can last…