After years of suing thousands of people for allegedly stealing music via the Internet, the recording industry is set to drop its legal assault as it searches for more effective ways to combat online music piracy.
The decision represents an abrupt shift of strategy for the industry, which has opened legal proceedings against about 35,000 people since 2003. Critics say the legal offensive ultimately did little to stem the tide of illegally downloaded music. And it created a public-relations disaster for the industry, whose lawsuits targeted, among others, several single mothers, a dead person and a 13-year-old girl.
Instead, the Recording Industry Association of America said it plans to try an approach that relies on the cooperation of Internet-service providers. The trade group said it has hashed out preliminary agreements with major ISPs under which it will send an email to the provider when it finds a provider’s customers making music available online for others to take.
Depending on the agreement, the ISP will either forward the note to customers, or alert customers that they appear to be uploading music illegally, and ask them to stop. If the customers continue the file-sharing, they will get one or two more emails, perhaps accompanied by slower service from the provider. Finally, the ISP may cut off their access altogether.
The RIAA said it has agreements in principle with some ISPs, but declined to say which ones. But ISPs, which are increasingly cutting content deals of their own with entertainment companies, may have more incentive to work with the music labels now than in previous years.
The new approach dispenses with one of the most contentious parts of the lawsuit strategy, which involved filing lawsuits requiring ISPs to disclose the identities of file sharers. Under the new strategy, the RIAA would forward its emails to the ISPs without demanding to know the customers’ identity.
Though the industry group is reserving the right to sue people who are particularly heavy file sharers, or who ignore repeated warnings, it expects its lawsuits to decline to a trickle. The group stopped filing mass lawsuits early this fall.
It isn’t clear that the new strategy will work or how effective the collaboration with the ISPs will be. “There isn’t any silver-bullet anti-piracy solution,” said Eric Garland, president of BigChampagne LLC, a piracy consulting company.
Mr. Garland said he likes the idea of a solution that works more with consumers. In the years since the RIAA began its mass legal action, “It has become abundantly clear that the carrot is far more important than the stick.” Indeed, many in the music industry felt the lawsuits had outlived their usefulness.
“I’d give them credit for stopping what they’ve already been doing because it’s been so destructive,” said Brian Toder, who represents a Minnesota mother involved in a high-profile file-sharing case. But his client isn’t off the hook. The RIAA said it plans to continue with outstanding lawsuits.
Over the summer, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo began brokering an agreement between the recording industry and the ISPs that would address both sides’ piracy concerns. “We wanted to end the litigation,” said Steven Cohen, Mr. Cuomo’s chief of staff. “It’s not helpful.”
As the RIAA worked to cut deals with individual ISPs, Mr. Cuomo’s office started working on a broader plan under which major ISPs would agree to work to prevent illegal file-sharing.
The RIAA believes the new strategy will reach more people, which itself is a deterrent. “Part of the issue with infringement is for people to be aware that their actions are not anonymous,” said Mitch Bainwol, the group’s chairman.
Mr. Bainwol said that while he thought the litigation had been effective in some regards, new methods were now available to the industry. “Over the course of five years, the marketplace has changed,” he said in an interview. Litigation, he said, was successful in raising the public’s awareness that file-sharing is illegal, but now he wants to try a strategy he thinks could prove more successful.
The RIAA says piracy would have been even worse without the lawsuits. Citing data from consulting firm NPD Group Inc., the industry says the percentage of Internet users who download music over the Internet has remained fairly constant, hovering around 19% over the past few years. However, the volume of music files shared over the Internet has grown steadily.
Meanwhile, music sales continue to fall. In 2003, the industry sold 656 million albums. In 2007, the number fell to 500 million CDs and digital albums, plus 844 million paid individual song downloads — hardly enough to make up the decline in album sales.
[from Wall Street Journal]
RIAA’s New Piracy Plan Poses a New Set of Problems
While the discontinuation of the lawsuit practice has its merits, the move opens up a whole new can of worms — one that could have serious implications for our future rights as consumers of information.
On the one hand, the shift — revealed Friday, initially in a story published in The Wall Street Journal — does mark the end of a troubling and generally ineffective process. RIAA’s past practice of independently tracking down and going after individual users has raised countless questions, most of which have focused on the group’s data gathering methodology. The organization has filed numerous lawsuits that have appeared to be faulty, including one now-infamous instance in which it attempted to sue a deceased woman. The woman — who was 83 when she passed away — “hated computers,” her children said.
Most data also suggests the lawsuits have done little to curb the online sharing of copyrighted music — rather, the number of filesharers appears to have actually increased since RIAA started its lawsuit push in 2003. A report released this past September by the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes that music sharing is “more popular than ever, despite the widespread public awareness of lawsuits.” Furthermore, the report points out, “the lawsuit campaign has not resulted in any royalties to artists.”
(The vast majority of RIAA’s lawsuits have resulted in minimal out-of-court settlements. The sole case that went to trial — against a mother of six named Jammie Thomas — saw its verdict thrown out in September. That case is still scheduled to be retried.)
The new plan, while ending the era of problem-ridden legal attacks, appears to circumvent the law and instead put the power directly into the hands of RIAA. The group says it will work directly with Internet service providers to go after people it believes are illegally sharing files. RIAA will notify an ISP, which will then warn the user and ultimately suspend or discontinue his access if a change is not observed. “Major ISPs” are said to be on-board with the idea.
Effectively, RIAA has turned itself into the sheriff, and your ISP into its deputy. Based on the same data gathering and user identification methods that have come under fire from the start, RIAA will now be able to get your Internet access limited or discontinued on its own if it for some reason flags you as an illegal filesharer. And I’m not the only one left feeling a little wary about that.
“This means more music fans are going to be harassed by the music industry,” saysFred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“The problem is the lack of due process for those accused,” von Lohmann continues. “In a world where hundreds of thousands, or millions, of copyright infringement allegations are automatically generated and delivered to ISPs, mistakes are going to be made. … Anyone who has ever had to fight to correct an error on their credit reports will be able to imagine the trouble we’re in for.”
In essence, the music industry is trading one questionable practice for another. Striking a deal to deem itself the judge and your ISP the regulator is not the answer — and it’s not going to win the war, either.
What is the solution, then? The EFF suggests RIAA support a “voluntary collective licensing regime” — basically, a legal peer-to-peer network that’d let music fans pay a small monthly fee for the right to freely trade music. A survey conducted this summer found an overwhelming 80 percent of current peer-to-peer users would be interested in paying for such a system. If organized, it’d put a stamp of approval on a process that’s going on anyway — and, for an inconsequential individual fee of something like $5 a month, the industry would be able to pay rights-holders based on how much their music is being downloaded.
“The more people share, the more money goes to rights-holders,” the EFF points out. “The more competition in P2P software, the more rapid the innovation and improvement. The more freedom for fans to upload what they care about, the deeper the catalog.”
The model follows the system set up for radio stations by organizations such as ASCAP and BMI. Perhaps RIAA would be wise to consider such a system, one that could serve the interests of all parties involved rather than harming them.
Here’s what it boils down to: When almost every voice in earshot is crying out against the way you operate, you have to start wondering if maybe — just maybe — you’re going about things the wrong way. The world is crying out, RIAA. It’s time to start listening.
[from Washington Post]
I wonder if Singaporeans has gotten into trouble with RIAA?
Anyway, they will still sue you if you download animes. Ph34r Odex!
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