RIAA ‘very strong gains’ report
p2pnet.net News View:- We know that more than any other genre, Latin music is the most heavily pirated, declares Rafael Fernandez, the RIAA`s vp Latin music, in an April 20 report.
The Big Four record label’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) claims p2p file sharing is wreaking havoc with sales, causing terrible hardships to its workers and forcing it to drastically cut back on “artist development”.
The operative word in file sharing is, of course, Share. In other words, nothing is bought or sold. No money changes hand. Nor is there any evidence that sharing music and/or movies online has any kind of impact on the sales of ‘product’.
And yet, while organized criminals and crime gangs – the counterfeiters and duplicators who use commercial entertainment cartel DVDs and CDs as their masters dance circles around the RIAA and MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), both cartel-owned groups are suing their own customers, trying to force them into buying ‘product’.
The lawsuits are a critical deterrent, says RIAA president Cary Sherman.
The trouble is: they`re not deterring anybody. File sharing continues to rise, as amply demonstrated by a number of recent academic and other studies. And contrary to Big Music protestations that it`s being devastated by file sharing and that sales are going down, it`s doing very nicely including in Latin America where, according to the EMI, UMG, Sony BMG and Warner, the `piracy` situation is desperate.
IFPI stands for International Federation of Phonographic Industry, another cartel organized and funded enforcement agency.
In its most recent report, the IFPI lists 2003 Domestic Piracy unit levels in Chile and Costa Rica at 20-25%, and Argentina and Brazil at 50% or more.
And nearly half of all pirated music seized was the Latin genre, says Fernandez
Yet, despite being the most heavily pirated, shipments of Latin music CDs to retail outlets rose by 23.6% in 2004, representing an 18.7% increase in value, according to annual RIAA data.
“Total Latin music shipments to retail jumped 25.6 percent – 48.5 million units in 2004 compared to 38.6 million in 2003,” it says. “That translates into a 21.6 percent growth in dollar value. Once again, DVD music videos enjoyed a successful year, experiencing a 278 percent gain in units shipped to retail and a 246 percent increase in dollar value compared to the previous year.”
Once again?
The RIAA, IFPI and all the other ***As around the world never fail to speak of `piracy` and `file sharing` in the same breath as if they`re somehow related.
But what does ‘piracy’ have to do with the very ordinary people (not a crook among them) who use p2p networks to share with each other?
Not a thing.
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April 23rd, 2005 at 8:29 pm
What isn’t mentioned here is the surtax that is added as an import item. Many times raising the prices to unheard of levels for the products. The music majors wouldn’t be selling many albums here if they had that steep of a tax on it. Prehaps thats the solution, tax them out of existance.
April 26th, 2005 at 8:29 pm
Household stand-alone CD Recorders, though not overly-popular, are neat and easy to use and do not accept normal CD-R blanks; the owner of such a unit must by Music CD-R blanks, which are about 20% more expensive. Why? The RIAA who insisted that the stand-alone units accept the more expensive Music CD’s ONLY, resulting in a cut of their purchase price of the CD’s in their pocket. They simply knew people would copy store-bought CD’s. In this way they re-coop that loss. I understand and have no problem with this. However, when I record non-copyrighted audio, it costs me 20% more because the unit accepts only Music CD’s. It’s ironic that the RIAA will tell you copying copyrighted CD’s even in this manner is illegal. It’s ironic that SONY, an RIAA label, makes a stand-alone CD recorder