RIAA urged, ‘Stop the lawsuits!’
p2pnet.net News:- The major music companies should drop their litigation-driven antipiracy efforts and, embrace a world of micropayments and alternative revenue streams that target the new music-consumption habits of digital music fans, says Terry McBride, ceo of Canada’s Nettwerk Music.
The company’s line-up includes Avril Lavigne, Dido, Sum 41 and Sarah McLachlan and Nettwerk decided to pick up the legal bill for Elisa Greubel, a 15-year-old Texas girl who’s being sued by the Big Four Organized Music family’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) for allegedly downloading music without permission.
The multi-billion-dollar Big Four, Warner Music (US), Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) and EMI (Great Britain) disingenuously claim they’re being devastated by people who use the p2p networks instead of buying over-priced, cookie-cutter Big Four ‘product,’ as they call their releases.
Coincidentally, p2pnet which, like Nettwerk is basd in British Columbia, Canada, is also trying to help an American family that’s being victimized by the RIAA.
p2pnet readers have so far contributed more than $14,000 to help Patti Santangelo, a New York mother. She’ll be the first of the RIAA’s 19,000 US victims to take the so-called ‘trade’ association on in an open court before a jury.
Ironically p2pnet, too, is being sued, but not by the music industry. Rather, it’s being targetted by Nikki Hemming, the ceo of the seriously discredited p2p application Kazaa, whose owner, Sharman Networks, recently achieved its long-time goal of linking up with the corporate music industry.
Meanwhile, “[The major labels] are using fear as a tactic [to] push these kids away from these P2P systems,” McBride told a crowd of 200 music and technology industry insiders, says MP3.com.
“You can’t use fear to change these behaviors, the story has him saying. It just isn’t effective. These lawsuits have hurt my artists. We need to stop these lawsuits.”
Some of the songs Greubel was alleged to have illegally downloaded were from Lavigne.
“Avril or any of my artists would never sue a fan,” McBride said. “I want those fans to share that music. When [the original] Napster hit, we had the same knee-jerk reaction that everyone else did: ‘Who are these kids, let’s get them and sue them.’ But after a while we realized that they were no different than I was when I was as a teenager, just looking to consume as much music as possible.”
“In 18 months the biggest music retailer in North America and maybe the world will be the consumer,” McBride said. “P2P is going to arrive in a way that nobody saw. Fans will be selling to each other and getting micropayments into their Paypal account.”
Touting Shawn Fanning’s DRM-loaded Snocap Linx system, McBridge is echoing what p2p communities have been saying for years: that the per-song price will have to to come down before the corporate music market can take off. “If the price comes down, the P2P marketplace will begin to go away,” MP3.com has him saying.
Actually, the p2p networks will never go away, especially while the labels try to use DRM as a CCM (consumer control mechanism). However, if and when the corporations start charging fair prices and treating their customers as reasonable people instead of potential criminals, they’ll be able to compete.
For now, “Music is more popular than it ever has been, yet for some strange reason the business has gone down,” the story quotes McBride as saying.
“They haven’t figured out how to monetize this new behavior [and] monetize it in a fair way. Every piece of new technology is supposed to be the death knell for the music industry. But you should never tell the consumer how to consume your music. You should make it available wherever they want. I don’t want to dictate how people buy our music.”
How much is a fair price? Between 25 and 49 cents per, says MP3.com.
But the Big Four are still grimly wholesaling ‘product’ at between 60 and 85 cents for each download, forcing their customers to try to charge $1 and up, depending on location.
By way of support, the labels are using the RIAA and their other alphabet organization around the world to try to sue their own customers into toeing the corporate bottom line.
Also See:
Greubel – RIAA ‘predatory litigation tactics”, February 27, 2006
being targetted – Cyber-libel and p2pnet, July 31, 2006
long-time goal – Kazaa owner’s DRM plan, August 4, 2006
MP3.com – Label boss blasts P2P lawsuits, August 18, 2006
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August 21st, 2006 at 2:59 pm
why is it only a canadian label is willing to stand up to them? If enough labels stood up to the RIAA, then the media couldn’t help but report on it, and maybe the general public would finally see the light.
August 21st, 2006 at 5:32 pm
There ARE others who are attempting to stand up to them. But what you fail to comprehend is that the **AAs __ARE__ the “media” and are NOT about to squeal on themselves to the public.
August 21st, 2006 at 6:14 pm
“There ARE others who are attempting to stand up to them. But what you fail to comprehend is that the **AAs __ARE__ the “media” and are NOT about to squeal on themselves to the public. ”
Precisely.
If it weren’t for the Internet, NO ONE would have ever heard
about the Sony Rootkit.
It could have been completely buried.
That’s also why the AA’s can claim all they are losing money
to “piracy”, and never mention a Boycott that just might
be interfering a bit with their sales
Kind of scary to think about what got swept under the rug before
blogging and internet citizen reporting took off.
August 21st, 2006 at 11:05 pm
“Kind of scary to think about what got swept under the rug before
blogging and internet citizen reporting took off.”
Scary to think what is being “swept under the rug” right now.
August 22nd, 2006 at 8:37 am
They don’t need the mega huge recording labels anymore to record their albums. Thanks to the Internet and also thanks to better and affordable hardware and software, or even free software, artists can now be their own producers, they can sell cheaper, sell more, and sue nobody.
August 22nd, 2006 at 11:50 am
“They don’t need the mega huge recording labels anymore to record their albums. Thanks to the Internet and also thanks to better and affordable hardware and software, or even free software, artists can now be their own producers, they can sell cheaper, sell more, and sue nobody. ”
NOW you get it
That’s the REAL reason they are criminalizing, suing, and taking
“ownership” of all of the free P2P apps and Networks. No more free
distribution for anyone not label owned or affiliated.
Once they control all the P2P apps, how much do you think it
would cost for the “priviledge” of being allowed to distribute on
THEIR P2P ??
All this “Going broke cuz of piracy” is just smoke and mirrors.