Online file swappers undaunted
p2pnet.net News:- “No matter what they do, it’s not going to work. To me the lawsuits are useless because the Internet is about sharing.”
That’s the last sentence in a long Associated Press story here slugged, Song trading still popular despite suits.
The subject is, of course, p2p file swapping centering on the music industry which launched a further 531 suts against p2p application users it claims are using p2p apps to improperly trade songs music owned by Big Music.
The RIAA swears its sue ‘em all tactics are, “slowing the tide of free downloads,” says AP, going on:
“A study released in January that surveyed 1,358 Internet users in late fall found the number of Americans downloading music dropped by half from six months earlier, with 17 million fewer people doing it nationwide. But some experts and users say that file sharers are only being more secretive, and that file swapping is actually increasing.
“At least two research firms say more than 150 million songs are being downloaded free every month.”
Nor does anyone who’s interested have to rely on research firms. Slyck.com carries regular updates on p2pnetwork numbers and it’s summary for today reads:
FastTrack 3,150,023; eDonkey 1,724,577; Overnet 1,089,536; iMesh 1,033,999; MP2P 254,594; Gnutella 225,641; DirectConnect 148,920; Filetopia 4,411; and, Ares 0.
That looks pretty busy to us.
Since September, music industry-owned ‘trade’ organ the RIAA (Recording INdustry Association of America) has sued 1,445 people. In every instance, the RIAA’s victims have settled out of court rather than face brutal civil trials in which they’d be battling with expert RIAA legal teams.
It’s not that the RIAA’s victims believe they’re in the wrong.Rather, they fear a loss in court would mean enormous financial penalties which, as ordinary people with ordinary resources, they wouldn’t be able to pay.
“I think the RIAA’s campaign is clearly and demonstrably having a tremendous effect, I’m just not sure to what end,” BigChampagne ceo Eric Garland is quoted as saying. And omScore Networks Graham Mudd researcher Graham Mudd told AP the number of consumers visiting pay music sights such as Apple’s iTunes and Napster, “pales in comparison to the file-sharing sights [sic]“.
Industry numbers can be confusing, adds the report.
“The NPD Group found the number of songs downloaded increased from September 2003 to November 2003, when it was 166 million. Nielsen/NetRatings, though, found the number of unique users on Kazaa dropped by half to 7.3 million users in December 2003 from a year earlier.
“Still, many point out, that’s 7.3 million users compared with 1,445 lawsuits” and as Jeremy Spurr, 26, a financial planner in Boston, is quoted as saying: “No matter what they do, it’s not going to work. To me the lawsuits are useless because the Internet is about sharing.”
Moreover, adds AP, “The suits, which were filed only against people who share music, have stopped his friends from sharing songs with each other, but not downloading it for themselves.”
February 24th, 2004 at 6:16 am
> “At least two research firms say more than 150 million songs are being downloaded free every month.”
So on the one hand we have the industry side winning this battle with a projected sales rate of 100 million units per annum.
On the other hand, 1.8 billion songs are going out over the p2p networks user to user without the industry needing to be involved in the transaction.
An intelligent and nimble industry would already have the beginnings of the new distribution system in place. They would understand that some losses would occur during the transition, but the new model would eventually supplant the old, and revenue would once again start to flow.
Unfortunately, this industry fails on both counts, for not only do they demonstrate a stunning lack of intelligence by suing and harassing their customer base, but they remain rooted to dinosaur marketing tactics which have their origins in the days when radio started.