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RIAA Claims P2P Has Been Contained

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tue Jun 13, 2006 12:17 PM
from the desperate-spin-control dept.
The Internet Media Music
Magorak writes "USA Today is reporting the RIAA now claims that the issues surrounding P2P and piracy have been contained and are no longer as big an issue as they once were. From the article; 'The problem has not been eliminated,' says association CEO Mitch Bainwol. 'But we believe digital downloads have emerged into a growing, thriving business, and file-trading is flat.'"
+ -
story

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[+] Your Rights Online: EFF Calls RIAA Tactics 'Reign of Terror' 215 comments
nanday writes "What happens when the RIAA prosecutes people for alleged illegal music downloads? In an article on Newsforge (also owned by OSTG), lawyer Ray Beckerman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation explains the RIAA's favorite tactics, and why they play fast and loose with the law. Beckerman also explains why two of these cases may stop the RIAA in its tracks - and what you can do for help." From the article: "In UMG vs. Lindor, the defendant 'is a home house-aid who's never even used a computer,' according to Beckerman. 'She's never operated a computer, she's never even turned on a computer. The only connection she has ever had to a computer is that she has on occasion dusted near the parts that she believes are a computer. And yet she is being pursued as an online distributor in peer-to-peer file sharing.' Since Beckerman became involved in the case after it had gone to federal court, he has tried to learn the details of the charges -- so far with little success. 'The RIAA is trying to conceal the information about how it conducts its investigation,' he says. 'They have stalled every discovery request we've made' -- presumably because to reveal this information would also reveal the weakness of all the similar cases."
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  • Phew... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jbirdkerr (879010) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:19PM (#15525420)
    Looks like Grandma and her illegal downloads of the "Happy Birthday" song can rest easy once again.

  • In other words... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:19PM (#15525423)
    Mission accomplished!

  • Yarrrr Matey! (Score:4, Funny)

    by spahn (227384) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:20PM (#15525429)
    We won!

  • i tried really (Score:4, Funny)

    by rritterson (588983) * on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:20PM (#15525430)
    I tried hard to come up with a serious comment to this article, I really did. But every time I started writing one, I starting giggling. The RIAA is just too much. So, then, let me be the first to say:

    BAHAHAHAHAHAAH

    • Re:i tried really (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:45PM (#15525761)
      I tried hard to come up with a serious comment to this article, I really did. But every time I started writing one, I starting giggling

      And yet, you clicked the 'Submit' button anyway. I think this sums up 90% of the comments on Slashdot.

    • Re:i tried really (Score:5, Insightful)

      by KU_Fletch (678324) <`bthomas1' `at' `ku.edu'> on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:46PM (#15525770)
      Well, if you can't really achieve victory, just change the goalposts to something easier and calim you won.
      • Right - so now that they ARE victorious, will they stop filing 20k John Doe lawsuits per month? Or is that whole thing still "game on"?

      • Good Project Managers are always successful (Score:5, Interesting)

        by vinn01 (178295) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @01:31PM (#15526284)
        if you can't really achieve victory, just change the goalposts to something easier and calim you won.

        I used to have a Project Manager who did that for his trainwreck projects. His projects were *always* successful. Unfinished requirements became "future enhancements". Non-working projects became "proof of concepts". Half-baked projects became "prototypes".

        The wonderful thing about project schedules and requirements is nobody saves the previous version.

        Nobody has ever underestimated the gullibility of upper-managers.

        And nobody has ever underestimated the gullibility of people who read industry press releases.

  • that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LM741N (258038) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:20PM (#15525442)
    I can still get on Gnutella and find almost every song that exists. What a bunch of nonsense. I believe they are just saying this so they can save face in the midst of their defeat.
    • Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

      Don't tell them! Let them declare victory and leave....

    • Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:5, Insightful)

      by moranar (632206) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:36PM (#15525661) Homepage Journal
      To be "fair", what they seem to be saying is that even though every existing song can be found on p2p, the money they're making is still increasing while p2p downloads aren't.

      • Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Skreems (598317) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @02:02PM (#15526607)
        So basically, they finally realized what the OSS/P2P/Hippie/Thief community (yeah yeah, flame on) has been saying for years: that "illegal" downloads are not actually depriving them of any money, since people use it to test out bands they're unsure of, or discover new music, as often as they just download without paying? But even though the rest of us have been trying to stuff this idea into their tiny little skulls, they have to declare moral victory so they don't lose face?

        • Yes, they do have to do it. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Ungrounded Lightning (62228) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @05:29PM (#15528219) Journal
          But even though the rest of us have been trying to stuff this idea into their tiny little skulls, they have to declare moral victory so they don't lose face?

          Yes, they do.

          Their company exists to protect the interests of their member copyright holders against widespread unauthorized copying.

          Up to now their members/customers/owners have been interpreting the "internet piracy" as lost sales - or at least more sales lost than sales gained by free advertising, etc. - and they didn't have a download business model.

          In this atmosphere, if they were to declare surrender, their members/customers/owners would just let them die - or replace their execs with new ones who would attempt to carry on the fight.

          But now "this stuff" is beginning to percolate into the skulls of the RIAA's customers. And many of them do have a way to profit directly from authorized downloads (thanks to iTunes and the like). So it's now possible for both the RIAA and its clientele to look at things more rationally. They can entertain the possibility that unauthorized downloading, like pre-Betamax-decision videotaping of broadcasts, might not be an unmitigated disaster - and may even be a Good Thing (especially once the for-pay alternative is available for honest people who are more than browsing.)

          So the RIAA can now back off its enforcement efforts and go back to more reasonable functions, such as hunting down mass-production pirates, collecting royalties from broadcasters and those creating commercial public performances, and so on.

          But on their way out they still need to declare victory - not just to save their own tails, but to keep some pressure on downloaders to go to the commercial services and pay the 99 cents, and to keep in the public mind the idea that they SHOULD do so.

          (Of course they can claim to their clientele (with some justification) that their efforts to date are what branded this concept into "the public mind" in the first place.)

          Meanwhile, now that the clients see that the "piracy" isn't going to sink their ships they can get on with the job of making product and making money off it, and taking advantage of the new medium to make even more profit.

          New media mean new opportunities for profit, and these opportunities are greater than the (largely illusory) "losses" from the unauthorized copying they enable. This was shown with piano rolls, wax tube recordings, disk recordings, radio broadcasting, and tape recordings.

          Now it has been shown with digital recordings and network distribution. But it's sufficiently counter-intuitive to The Suits that they have to learn it fresh every time.

    • Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gstoddart (321705) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:40PM (#15525710) Homepage
      I can still get on Gnutella and find almost every song that exists. What a bunch of nonsense. I believe they are just saying this so they can save face in the midst of their defeat.

      Or, they're trying to use it as a tactic to convince people that everybody else has given up on using p2p, and they're better off switching to the 'legit' ways of doing it.

      Sometimes, trying to affect people's perceptions is as effective as trying to affect their actions.

      Everything the *AA's says is all about spin and perception!
    • Quiet! My remote Jedi Mind Trick finally worked!

      "These are not the nodes you're looking for"

      • Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:4, Insightful)

        by AuMatar (183847) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @01:05PM (#15525955)
        I don't know anyone who's been scared off of file sharing. I know a few who aren't into mainstream and stopped because they had all they wanted. I know a few more who moved to allofmp3.com because it was worth 2 bucks an album to not have to search to find stuff. But I don't know anyone who stopped because they're afraid of being sued. A conservative estimate syas there were 1 million US file sharers- they sued a few hundred. I'd take those odds any day of the week.

  • If you cannot win... (Score:5, Funny)

    by HRogge (973545) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:20PM (#15525444)
    If you cannot win, claim victory.
    • Hey, it worked for the US in Iraq after all ;)

    • Good: we want them to think they have won (Score:5, Interesting)

      by KWTm (808824) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:28PM (#15525551) Journal
      You know what? Maybe they have won, if student pirating has been curbed to the extent that they want. And if more digital downloads are legal now than before, then that's great. It probably means that more companies are getting a clue about how to take advantage of the business model, but we'll let the RIAA save face.

      All we want them to do is quit trying to stomp out every conceivable method of information transfer in the name of stopping piracy, and go back to their executive boardrooms and golf courses.

      • Re:Good: we want them to think they have won (Score:5, Interesting)

        by flibuste (523578) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:34PM (#15525635)

        No, they would have won if former users of P2P were now downloading songs from paying sites, which is probably not the case. Have all the people willing to "illegaly" (meaning "against MAFIAA rules") download music moved to ITunes or such? I doubt it. What we'll see is an upcoming huge drop in CD sales in favor of downloaded music, but will the gross income increase? I am not sure.

        They're losing the battle they started. Just as in project management, to keep face when a project is majorly failing, declare a success mid-course then terminate the project before big money gets lost.

      • It's a trick. Get an axe. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:47PM (#15525784)
        Of course they've won. They've got the "get rid of allofmp3.com" as one of the requirements for Russia to join the WTO, and they've got Sweden raiding (apparently against Swedish law) ThePirateBay just because the U.S. asked! Seriously, this isn't about P2P. This is about controlling distribution channels. You don't go after BitTorrent because you people are using it to pirate your copyrighted material. You go after the people distributing the copies. (Just like you don't go after Ford because people use cars to move drugs around the country. On the other hand, if you are a cartel of taxi drivers, removing private cars from the road is a great way to guaranteed revenues.) They only way I'll believe this is the end of it is if I see sales figures for RIAA members dropping drastically (and then they'd just blame pirates...).

    • Kind of like this... (Score:5, Funny)

      by geobeck (924637) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @01:36PM (#15526347) Homepage

      TMS - Typical Movie Scientist
      TMG - Typical Movie General

      TMG: Doc, what's the status of the plague?
      TMS: As of an hour ago, the virus has infected every living thing on Earth.
      TMG: But it hasn't spread since then?
      TMS: Well, no, but--
      TMG: Then it's been contained! Victory is ours!

  • Meanwhile... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lithgon (896737) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:21PM (#15525448)
    Pirate 1: Arrr! The RIAA ship has been swashbuckled! Pirate 2: Ayye! The fools even think they sunk us! ARRR!

  • RIAA says its contained? (Score:5, Funny)

    by LDMackSAE (888394) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:21PM (#15525450) Homepage
    Isn't that like a /.er's parent saying "My child doesn't spend that much time on the computer"?

  • Not flat (Score:5, Funny)

    by Himring (646324) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:21PM (#15525452) Homepage Journal
    file-trading is flat.

    I actually think of it more as a rectangular prism....

  • was the guy... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Churla (936633) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:22PM (#15525465)
    Was the guy who made this press release doing so on the deck of a ship with a big "Mission accomplished" sign behind him?

    Any chance there?

  • If you were the RIAA... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Douglas Simmons (628988) * on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:22PM (#15525466) Homepage
    What would you do?

    Seriously...
    • I'd try to squeeze as much money outta the organisation as I legally can before it sinks. Because it will. They're sitting on the horse cart and the automobile came into play.

      • Re:If you were the RIAA... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by happyemoticon (543015) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @01:32PM (#15526299) Homepage

        The perception that the *AA is going away is somewhat flawed. Sure, like many companies in the past, they are hanging onto outmoded business models and many individual companies are doomed to shrink. But the 800 lb gorillas of the past, such as IBM and Xerox, didn't go away - they just reinvented themselves and shrank somewhat, while other companies took innovations that the gorillas were too thick to see as viable and ran with them.

        To say that their entire business is going to disappear is to overlook the fact that most people like the music that they sell, and like buying their albums. Sure, I have friends who can record songs that sound as good as any studio-polished single in their bedrooms on commodity equipment. Certainly, I watched Star Wreck: The Pirkinning, and I know that fan films can be made at a fraction of the cost of a real motion picture, with more thigh-high boots and miniskirts, and still look great. But if you indulge in these things, it means you're an avant-garde free content nerd, and you are in the minority. I know exactly how out-of touch I am, because I'm looking at last year's top 50 and I don't have a clue what 95% of them are. But clearly somebody's buying them, and I suspect that these people would be more than happy to download portions of these songs as ringtones onto their Verizon mobile phone. Whole droves of teenagers are listening to something with the nonce-words "Numa, Numa" in it, and buying it on ITMS as well.

        Imagine that. I'm 23 this Thursday, I have about five computers, I write for a living, play the guitar, have a reasonably active social life, and I feel like both a luddite and a hermit. I'm two steps away from Abe Simpson. Is this what all of adulthood is like?

        Anyway, what is going to contract is the retail distribution channels, such as movie theaters and music stores. The cable companies and the telcos will pick up the slack like I've hinted at above. However, since the content owners still have the majority of the market and you still have to do business with them to have a prayer of making it anyway, they will continue to snatch up new artists and buy their souls.

    • Re:If you were the RIAA... (Score:4, Funny)

      by tbmcmullen (940544) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:54PM (#15525846)
      Shoot myself in the face sixteen times for the betterment of society as a whole.

      Seriously...

  • Nice to see wrong statistics propagated (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jhill (446614) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:22PM (#15525479) Homepage
    Would appear that the writer of the story does what writers do best, not research facts. Appears that they're still using the same old sorry BS of CD sales dropped 30% in whatever year it was. When in fact, what has been shown is that it was singles that dropped ( you know, the things you can't find any more, because people aren't willing to pay 5 dollars for 1 song on a CD ), during that year CD sales actually increased.

    Overall the article is rather blah, I'm sort of surprised that they didn't throw in there something about the lose of some umpteen billion dollars that they would have made if it weren't for illegal file sharing...the good myth of each download is a lost sale.

    • Re:Nice to see wrong statistics propagated (Score:5, Funny)

      by ZombieWomble (893157) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:32PM (#15525600)
      Heck, if you think that statistic is bad, look at this one:

      "Nearly 10 million people are online, swapping media, at any given time," he says. That May figure is up from 8.7 million people in 2005, he says.

      Apparently a 15% growth rate per year is what the music industry calls 'contained'. I wish someone would come and 'contain' my savings account...

  • /. has been hacked (Score:5, Funny)

    by kfstark (50638) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:23PM (#15525488) Homepage
    A story about Microsoft calling a truce with the GPL followed by the RIAA saying P2P is not a problem.

    It's not April 1st.

    Hmmm... Only logical explanation is that /. has been hacked and someone is posting bogus stories.

    --Keith

    • Re:/. has been hacked (Score:5, Funny)

      by JavaTHut (9877) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:29PM (#15525574) Homepage
      > It's not April 1st.
      >
      > Hmmm... Only logical explanation is that /. has been hacked and someone is posting bogus stories.

      We'll find out soon enough ... if we see this same story appear five times before week's end, we'll know only the real slashdot editors could acomplish that.

  • It's completely and utterly true (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Toby The Economist (811138) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:24PM (#15525502)
    It's true - because everyone who is going to do P2P download is now doing it.

    So he is right; P2P growth is flat - in exactly the same way TV purchase growth is flat.

    Note any shortage of TVs around the first world? alas not...

    • Re:It's completely and utterly true (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Toby The Economist (811138) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:31PM (#15525592)
      In fact, thinking about it, what I find interesting is the implied equivelence of legal and illegal downloads.

      There appears to exist in the RIAA mind the notion that if legal downloads rise, illegal downloads must fall.

      I think the derives from a failure to understand that the majority of illegal downloads *would never have otherwise been a legal purchase*.

      Naturally, if you imagine the two are precisely correlated, if you see that the rate of illegal download growth has leveled out, you might - if you wanted to imagine it were so - consider that the problem had been "contained", especially since the number of legal downloads is rising (naturally, since it began recently at zero).

      In reality of course it simply means the problem has maximized and naturally, with no relation to the RIAA in any way, the number of users has levelled out.

      The RIAA just doesn't get it, it seems.

      Of course, we have to consider how the RIAA are measuring numbers - absolutely nothing is said about this. Are they still fixated on the now-defunct Kazaa network? looking on eMule right now, there appear to be approximately 19 (nineteen) million concurrent users. On one P2P network, just at this moment. In the evenings UK time it's about 26 (twenty-six) million.

      It's quite likely their measuring method is deliberately deceptive, in which case the statement means even less that it does.

  • There's actually a little truth in this. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ErichTheRed (39327) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:24PM (#15525504)
    If file trading is measured in terms of ease of use, then the number of available outlets has dropped. Things like Napster and the WinMX utility used to make file swapping incredibly easy even for people who weren't computer savvy. Now it takes a little work to get what you want. Plus, the major public file sharing networks are full of incomplete files, viruses and other garbage that most people don't want to deal with. In that way, people are either turning to harder-to-use file sharing techniques or giving up and getting a "real" copy of the media from a service that you know is good.

    Your average user is using LimeWare and used to typing words into a search box. Doing this these days will usually yield you one or two real copies, and hundreds of viruse files or trojans.

  • Snrk (Score:5, Insightful)

    by American AC in Paris (230456) * on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:27PM (#15525546) Homepage
    But we believe digital downloads have emerged into a growing, thriving business

    ...yeah, after Apple dragged your sorry asses kicking and screaming into the digital age. After you tried everything in your power to make digital downloads as locked down, expensive, and all but impossible to effectively implement.

    Digital downloads have emerged into a growing, thriving business despite your lot's best efforts to screw it all up.

  • Mission accomplished! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Opportunist (166417) on Tuesday June 13 2006, @12:29PM (#15525569)
    Just... where have I heard that before...

    Well, if you can't win, just say you won and rely on your opponent to not contradict you.

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