File swapping doesn’t equal piracy
p2pnet.net News:- “Lawsuits by the record industry are being used to stop the dramatic decline in sales of recorded music, said to be 45 percent of volume during the last four years, and said to be a factor pushing music makers and distributors, such as Tower Records, into bankruptcy or insolvency.”
Lodged by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), the lawsuits in question – hundreds of them – are aimed mostly at teenaged p2p file swappers the RIAA’s owners, the record labels, say share copyrighted music online.
None of the cases have ever actually been before a judge because the defendents, all ordinary people, don’t have the financial resources to stand against Big Music and its heavyweight, and very expensive, lawyers.
The lawsuits are civil, not criminal, although the music industry does everything it can to imply that they’re somehow criminal actions, that the people named in them are, by default, also criminals, and that p2p applications such as Morpheus and Blubster are somehow criminal tools.
In fact, the RIAA is doing very well out of them because it was able to get PepsiCola and Apple to use some of the teenaged victims named in the lawsuits to appear as near-criminals in iTunes-Pepsi promo commercials.
However, people who use p2p software share a lot more than music.
“When the music industry hears p2p, they instantly think piracy and that’s not what p2p technology is about at all,” Blubster ceo Wayne Rosso told p2pnet, going on:
“Unfortunately, the music industry can’t see beyond that and part of our mission is to try to educate the people who count about the potential of p2p technology.
“As a perfect example, the BBC has announced plans to put its archives online using p2p technolgy.
“But the record industry has only just learned how to spell peer-to-peer and it’ll take them a long time to get beyond that.”
The unqualified, unequivocal statement in the intro that “Lawsuits by the record industry are being used to stop the dramatic decline in sales of recorded music” is a perfect example of how the media accepts anything the music industry comes up with without question.
It’s from a TechNewsWorld report here on Michell Scimeca’s bid to have the RIAA charged under the RICO (Racketeering Influenced & Corrupt Organizations) Act enacted in 1970 to prosecute organized crime and help victims seek compensation.
“They’re banding together to extort money, telling people they’re guilty and they will have to pay big bucks to defend their cases if they don’t pony up now,” says her lawyer, Bart Lombardo.
“Legal action is a major deterrent, as well as the risk-cost factor associated with illegal file-sharing,” the story has lawyer Dan Penning saying.
The reality, though, is far from stopping the slide, which is tied not to file sharing but, rather, to Big Music’s antiqued business models and PR and marketing practices, the lawsuits are being used to terrorize people into thinking Big Music is all there is.
Because the labels don’t sell music, they sell ‘product’.
“Music is now a commodity and the music business is in crisis,” says The Eagles’ Don Henley.
But, “The problem is the music industry itself. It’s systemic. The industry, which was once composed of hundreds of big and small record labels, is now controlled by just a handful of unregulated, multinational corporations determined to continue their mad rush toward further consolidation and merger.”
The attention is on music and movie file sharing because Hollywood wants it that way. It suits its overall business game plan, such as it is.
And Scimeca’s RICO charge?
“Leading entertainment law” attorney Jay Cooper told TechNewsWorld the lawsuit is “preposterous”.
It’s so, “obviously illegal when someone steals another person’s property,” said Cooper who, by an amazing coincidence, is also the former president of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences and the California Copyright Conference. “Of course they [the labels] have every right to sue.”
February 21st, 2004 at 6:42 am
One more reason to “set the record straight”. Whenever you see a poorly researched or obvious propaganda piece in the media, use whatever means available to tell the author what you think is wrong with the piece. Use any feedback forums and get the word out. No question these RIAA hacks are clearly in the wrong, not only for their intimidation tactics, but for their obfuscation of the real issues involved.
Let’s recap once more for the people who might have missed something:
- P2P trading rips off the ‘artists’ (but in their contract they are treated strictly as work for hire contract performers)
- File swapping is ‘piracy’ (not true unless it’s performed at sea by a ship illegally taking property by force)
- File Sharing is hurting the music business (there are no statistics to support this claim anywhere)
- Lawsuit targets are criminals (patently false)
- Legitimate downloading services using DRM are a benefit to the people in the industry (only true for the labels)
It’s bound to be a tough struggle, because there is cross pollution in ownership with the media and these same major labels/ studios and therefore their objectivity is suspect. However, the average citizen is not aware of these issues until someone informs them of the real circumstances.
If we concerned netizens don’t do this, who will?
February 21st, 2004 at 7:11 pm
To comment on your first point, P2P trading of music that is not marked to be freely distributed does in fact rip off the artists, and results in them being doubly ripped off. They are attempting to make the little percentage that the recording industry gives them, and downloading for free instead of buying means that they don’t even make that.
February 21st, 2004 at 9:33 pm
I hear your argument, but I’ve come across some articles that suggest that perhaps the situation may not be as dire as we may think. Silicon.com’s Will sturgeon has a piece titled, “Record industry cutting off nose to spite face.” He makes the argument that p2p is actually spurning record sales, citing a Nielson/NetRatings survey which finds that 71% of file sharers, “regularly buy music either online or on the high street.”
Furthermore, Ipsos-Reid conducted a survey (in 2002 I believe) which found that 81% of file sharers buy as much or more music than when they first began file sharing. Read about it here: http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?id=1542 (you’ll have to copy and paste the link)
February 22nd, 2004 at 12:11 am
Your point is valid but “if” the artist is never going to see a royalty check anyhow, unauthorized or not, the exposure the artist gets may translate into greater concert attendance, mdse sales etc.
Perhaps lost in the translation between mind and keyboard, my concept was that the situation is not as one dimensional as the RIAA states it to be. That is why the record needs to be set straight and the obvious falsehoods rebutted if possible.
If there was an all inclusive solution that could fairly compensate artists, I would be all for it, but I cannot for the life of me see how the industry side would ever have the will to make it happen.
February 22nd, 2004 at 8:58 pm
Jupiter Research also conducted a study during 2000 which concluded that access to Napster increased rather than decreased CD sales. The press release is no longer on their site but is accessible via the waybackmachine at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030214182854re_/www.jup.com/company/pressrelease.jsp?doc=pr000721
The argument that p2p file sharing has a positive effect, or at least a neglible negative effect, on the music business is, as we all know by now, no defense to a claim of copyright infringement under our current law.
The positive effects of file sharing, though, is one of many arguments that support a change in the law – or it would be were it not for the well-funded, and uncritically accepted, rhetoric put out by the industry that file sharing is the cause of the industry’s woes.
The change copyright law needs is a compulsory license for the reproduction and distribution of digital sound recordings (I am less sure of a compulsory license for other digital works). There is no hope, however, that such a bill will be successful within the foreseeable future. The clout wielded by the content owners in Congress and in the Administration is too strong and not counter-balanced by any commercial interest group or any organized, or organizable, mass of digital entertainment consumers.
Our Administration, by the way, is requiring in free trade agreements even more stringent restrictions on the digital manipulation of information than currently exists in our own country. For example, the Administration is requiring other countries to confer on their copyright owners the exclusive right to “make available for download” copyrighted works. Current U.S. law confers on copyright owners the right to distribute their works. This new “make available for download” right, however, is a fundamental expansion of the distribution right because it makes unlawful an act for which no harm has yet been shown to flow. Aside from the obvious fact that the work may never be downloaded and, consequently, the copyright owner never harmed, making available for download works which are then used fairly simply cannot itself be unlawful because the fair use of the work by the downloader does not infringe the owner’s copyright. Yet the Administration, at the behest of U.S. content owners, is feverishly working to ensure that copyright owners are provided this additional digital control over copyrighted works.
It is too often forgotten, even by those who know better, that copyright law was created first and foremost to benefit the public. The benefits that flow to those who sell copyrighted works and even (I say with trepidation) the benefits that flow to those who create the works are merely secondary to the benefit the public derives from the works. In short, when copyright law requires change, the interests of both the copyright owner and creator must yield to the interests of the public.
Supreme Court precedent is clear: “The limited scope of the copyright holder’s statutory monopoly, like the limited copyright duration required by the Constitution, reflects a balance of competing claims upon the public interest: Creative work is to be encouraged and rewarded, but private motivation must ultimately serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts. The immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an ‘author’s’ creative labor. But the ultimate aim is, by this incentive, to stimulate artistic creativity for the general public good.” Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U.S. 151, 156 (1975). Numerous subsequent Supreme Court cases have reaffirmed this view.
Absent a commercial interest group to carry the compulsory license banner, I think change will come only when the combined weight of wireless technology and ubiquitous file sharing through liability-free p2p platforms makes it evident to all that control, for good or ill, rests with the public rather the content owners.
Dan Ballard
February 24th, 2004 at 6:24 pm
change the price of cd and dvd and i will gladly buy more
February 24th, 2004 at 6:25 pm
anonamous coward bull s++++++ names woods uk resident now buying cd dvd from usa as much cheaper so uk change the price of cd and dvd and i will gladly buy more