RIAA drops lawsuits; ISPs to battle file sharing
The music industry's highly controversial strategy of suing customers for file sharing has mostly ended.
The Recording Industry Association of America said Friday that it no longer plans to wage a legal assault against people who it suspects of pirating digital music files. What the RIAA should have said, though, is that it won't go after most people who illegally file share. My music industry sources say that the RIAA will continue to file lawsuits against the most egregious offenders--the person who "downloads 5,000 or 6,000 songs a month is still going to get sued," a source at a major record company told me.
The strategy of suing music fans has long been criticized by artists, consumers, and even some record-label executives. Critics have said it alienates music buyers and more importantly has been ineffectual. Now, the music industry has a new form of protection: Internet service providers.
According to a story in The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), which broke the news about the RIAA's new strategy, unidentified Internet service providers have agreed to "reduce the service," to chronic file-sharers. Exactly what a reduction of service may include isn't specified, but a source close to the situation said that none of the ISPs have agreed to limit a user's bandwidth, a practice known as throttling.
The way the new enforcement system will work is that the RIAA will alert an ISP that a customer appears to be file sharing. The ISP will then notify the person that he or she appears to be file sharing. If the behavior by the customer doesn't change, then more e-mails will be sent. If the customer ignores these e-mails, then the ISP may choose to suspend the person's service. If all else fails, they can choose to discontinue service.
Under the plan, which was brokered by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the music industry will not know the customer's identity. What this means is that ISPs have now gone into the enforcement business, and this has always been one of the greatest fears of those who have wanted ISPs to remain neutral.
"This is very troubling," said Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that advocates for Internet rights. "Creating lists of people who can't get Internet access based on allegations of breaking a law that hasn't been evaluated in a court of law. It's good that that the (RIAA) wants to stop suing individuals but they should haven't done it in the first place. I'd be especially concerned if the music labels can get you kicked off one ISP and then arrange to get you kicked off others, or the creation of blacklists. That's certainly what our fears have been about private legal enforcement regimen."
News.com Poll
Was litigating against file sharers an effective deterrent? That depends on who you ask. To many music fans, the practice was a loathsome and heavy-handed approach that only served to inspire people to resist efforts to keep them from obtaining music. To those in the music industry, it helped alert the public following the Napster era--when many consumers believed there was nothing wrong with sharing music files--that pirating music harmed artists and record stores, and was also against the law.
But according to most of the data, the lawsuits didn't prevent illegal file sharing from growing. At the same time, the strategy also alienated scores of potential music buyers.
The truth is that the music industry no longer needs the RIAA to chase after large numbers of file sharers. Sure, music piracy still thrives but is less and less about the mainstream. The industry has learned that the answer to piracy isn't to intimidate people into obtaining music legally. The recording companies have made music available in ways that actually appeal to consumers.
If people don't want to pay for music, they can go to MySpace Music, YouTube or iMeem and listen to all the ad-supported streaming songs they want. And a huge number of digital music fans are willing to pay for songs at iTunes.
You can bet the ISP deal is going to be controversial one, but before going on to the next fight, I think music fans should celebrate the end of a dark period in the industry's history.
See also:
• Copy of RIAA's new enforcement notice to ISPs
• Sources: RIAA budget will shrink soon
• Lawsuits or not, the RIAA still doesn't understand us
• RIAA president: 'No talk of blacklisting'
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
Complete, idiotic nonsense. Theft of property is not a constitutional right. People who download copyrighted music without paying for it are thieves pure and simple. People who share their copyrighted music with others are thieves, no different from someone who gives a copy of Microsoft Office to their friend. Just because some morons think they can rationalize theft doesn't make it a constitutional right.
I still don't understand how you can "steal" music. Do you "steal" music whenever you hear it? Sure maybe you can infringe on someone's copyright by performing their song and saying it's yours, or publishing it. But you can't steal music anymore than you can steal words or sounds or light or ideas. No one owns music. Do I steal music every time I go to a mall, or walk by a concert venue? Do I steal music when I listen to street performers or when I listen to a friends cd when I ride in his car? Do I steal music when I borrow his cd? What if I put a song on my ipod? That isn't stealing. It's called listening to music. And maybe if the RIAA spent more time listening to music and less time suing their customers they'd realize how wrong they are.
Duress is illegal. Any settlement resulting from duress is therere illegal.
In other words, if you stay away form press releases and just look at the allegations NO ONE has ever been sued for simply downloading. Everyone being sued is being sued for placing songs they have bought or downloaded onto the net. There sees to be no case where someone who downloads only has ever been sued.
It is not even clear there is a legal concept "illegal download", criminal or civil, as that has never been established in case law. I think it is pretty clear why. visiting a site with content not fully licensed would mean the visitor is "illegally downloading." Simply receiving a spam email with a a quote from copyright text unauthorized would constitute "illegal downloading" Saving a USNET binaries that is named as one thing but is really a copyright material would be an offense. Obiously this would mean that everyone, including everyone who ever worked for the RIAA and MPAA themselves has committed "illegal downloading" as well. POP, HTTP, NNTP an one way torrent are reception of copyright material has never been prosecuted or resulted in a successful suit (in the US) for that reason
. The RIAA (and MPAA) appear to gain a benefit from the confusion of terms and activities.IN fact there appear to be NO cases where a person who does not distribute or redistribute content, has been established as to having committed an actionable infraction.
http://idek.net/1BO
And I want to see that list of ISPs that have agreed to be police.
The ISP's provide a service. The content owners provide a product. You pay the ISP's for the service they provide. You pay the content owners for the products they produce. I don't see where you're getting this idea that one owes the other anything.
You may as well say the states should pay a portion of the taxes and tolls they collect on roads to Wal-Mart, because that's where a lot of the people who use the roads are going. Does this make sense to you as well?
The greater issue is ISPs and shopping for a carrier. Cablevision hauls the connectivity to my home; I do not have ISP choices other than choosing another method of hauling fiber or cable to my home. That is not deregulated choice. Deregulated choice includes equal access to the customer -- it's like saying I have a choice in gas or water supply. Really? Do I really get to choose PRECISELY which reservoir of water I'll consume? I'm not stupid, and I have lots of company.
-R
Kudos to the RIAA for finally backing down somewhat, even if it might not be for the right reasons. It's a step in the right direction.
What do you call a dozen RIAA lawyers buried 6 feet underground? A good start!
Much better plan. If you're an idiot, or a RIAA executive.
Honestly...would you rather have your internet "suspended", or get sued out of house and home? This is a MUCH better method of regulating piracy.
And RIAA, if you're reading this...kudos for backing down. You'll alienate a LOT less people this way. I promise.
Sounds a lot like conviction without a trial to me. What happened to innocent until proven guilty in a court of law? I guess when lots of money is involved our Constitutional rights can just be damned.
The real frightening aspect to this is that if this approach gets a pass, what's next? What is the next online behavior to get this kind of treatment? Is big brother going to monitor our e-mail traffic and throttle down or cut service to those with a liberal bent--or a conservative bent, depending upon the point of view of the online thought police?
Once you open that Panora's box, there's no telling what will come out.
And suppose the government itself gets into the act? What kind of big brother spying on individual citizens will that start? Many of us to our business online because it has been made mostly secure. But suppose government can look over your electronic shoulder at will? One wonders where the Constitutional guarantees of unreasonable searches and seizures from the Fourth Amendment went.
The Internet was supposed to bring us together. I guess the RIAA wants to sing a different tune.
The bottom line isn't that people are pirating music to the point that the music industry isn't able to function or will ever be inable to function. The bottom line is that the RIAA wants its way. If I download a song, listen to it, like the artist, I'm more likely to buy the album, especially if that artist is distributing the album on his own. The bottom line should always be the artist, but that's the problem. The RIAA isn't supporting the artist. The RIAA is supporting itself. Give me music without labels and I'll pay the artist, but I'll be damned if I ever pay a label.
Nothing was lost. Just a copy of a file was made.
It is not stealing or theft.
If that TV is overpriced so I decide to steal it, then the retailer lost an item in inventory, something real was lost. The record companies lose nothing if someone makes a copy of a file. Especially if the person receiving the copy would never have bought it in the first place. This is analogous to making a recording of a song off the radio. Is that theft? No, it is copyright infringement. Two totally different concepts.
To understand the mentality, you first need to understand what we are discussing.
To continue the TV analogy you started... A retailer invests in a stock of TVs on the assumption that someone will later have a need for one and purchase it. If they stock TVs no one likes or price them too high, no one buys them (and no one would claim taking one from the store without paying for it is legal). Similarly, the recording labels invest money into artists under the assumption that future sales of those artists' music will allow them get a return on that investment -- that return on investment is tied to the CD and file download sales. So the file copy that you claim isn't "real" has a direct impact on the industry's revenue source.
You'd be pissed (and looking for a new job) if you spent months or years writing a book and only sold one copy, especially if that one copy was digitized, posted to a website, and downloaded by thousands of others with no payment to you. No one really stole anything from you, though, because the 10,000 hardback books are still in the warehouse, right?? To say that copyright infringement is not stealing is flat out wrong.
Again, you can claim you would not have purchased the song/CD to begin with, but I would propose that a majority of those involved in the piracy aren't doing it to simply to sample a song -- they seek out songs they are interested in, keep them, and continue to enjoy listening to them without ever compensating the industry.
There are many valid complaints about how the music industry works and I think it's great that people feel passionately enough about music to try to change things. However, stealing is not the way to do. Boycotting music purchasing IS a great way to get change in the business model, but piracy undermines that effort -- the boycott then appears simply to be theft. DRM does suck for those that legally acquire their music. It's all of the folks that insist on illegally trading files that ruin it for all. The bottome line is that most of the music file trading occurring is simply done to acquire something without paying those that own the rights to it.
C O P Y R I G H T I N F R I N G E M E N T I S N O T T H E F T
If you can't understand the distinction, then you are beyond help.
What we're talking about here is people not paying the usage license for copyrighted material. If the copyright holder is expected to get paid for each song or CD obtained, then yes you have stolen a sale from the holder. However you want to spin it, sharing files, especially if that's all you do and never pay for anything, can be considered as theft. You didn't pay the usage license. I'm not going to go into right or wrong, I'm just saying let's not sugar coat what it is.
will that stop piracy completely? Probably not but it will most likely drastically reduce it.
The lawsuits were an ineffectual strategy, and it's a good idea to end it. But that doesn't change the fact that stealing is stealing, and file "sharers" are thieves. And no, I don't work in the music industry. I just prefer to call things by their right names.
Real fans don't steal music.
Nothing was lost. Just a copy of a file was made.
It is not stealing or theft.
If that TV is overpriced so I decide to steal it, then the retailer lost an item in inventory, something real was lost. The record companies lose nothing if someone makes a copy of a file. Especially if the person receiving the copy would never have bought it in the first place. This is analogous to making a recording of a song off the radio. Is that theft? No, it is copyright infringement. Two totally different concepts.
- by renGek December 19, 2008 10:43 AM PST
- Maybe if the music industry focused on producing good music instead of marketing music they would actually have good stuff for people to buy. Finding blonds with clear skin and marketing them as fresh music doesn't inspire people to buy music.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
Showing 1 of 3 pages (81 Comments)They can scream about buying/stealing music all they like. But beyond the artists that I have bought music from for years and years, there is nothing else out there that makes me want to buy or download. I bought all of 2 songs in 2008 from amazon because nothing else was worth a damn.