Author Archives: Michael Griffiths

Apart from having a strikingly obvious bias, the Seminal blog makes perhaps the oddest objection to the RIAA lawsuits I’ve seen. They claim that we should boycott the RIAA because artists aren’t seeing the money:

But here’s the kicker: Even if the RIAA settles or wins a court judgement, even if the lawsuit isn’t thrown out of court for the frivolous piece of litigation it is, the artists who actually make the music that is being stolen don’t receive one thin dime back from the RIAA. That’s right, the artists who slave for years to make records, pour out their souls into their CDs, and enrich our lives in a myriad of ways don’t actually get any of the money recovered through these ridiculous lawsuits. Not one red cent.

Next time you wonder why CDs are $20, I think I have an answer for you. This system is broken. There is no reason to support the record industry by purchasing music. If you want to support artists, download their music for free and send them a crisp, new $5 bill. They’ll appreciate it a lot more, trust me.

I’m wondering how the fact that artists don’t get any of the money ‘won’ through litigation has any impact on the whole copyright infringement debate.

I’m by no means in the pro-RIAA camp, but attempting to pigeonhole the RIAA lawsuits as attempting to make money is absurd. The lawsuits are really just a marketing campaign. It states: “downloading music online without paying anything is against the law.” The RIAA is certainly not trying to make money with these lawsuits. Or even ‘make back lost income.’

The money the RIAA collects doesn’t even cover legal fees. It’s a pittance.

Copyright law – and thus the RIAA campaign – is based around the idea of disproportionate punishment. The cost is high enough that you don’t bother breaking the law in the first place. It’s a way of reducing the amount of traffic in the US legal system – which is large enough already. This is why the judgment on sharing 23-odd songs is over $200,000. Of course, the RIAA doesn’t want to be too unreasonable – which is why they’ve been settling for the (fairly reasonable) price of a couple thousand bucks. More than it would cost to buy all the songs individually, but enough that people can actually pay it.

I do, however, agree that artists would prefer $5 bucks straight from you for an album. They aren’t likely to make any more than that via the RIAA, unless they’re really popular and have a large amount of bargaining power. That doesn’t mean paying $5 to the artist justifies copyright infringement – it’s certainly still against the law, as the record labels actually ‘own’ the legal copyright to the music. And; unless the artist releases the music themselves, I’m sure they’d be rather creeped out by it.

Incidentally, sending a letter with a few bucks in it to your artist’s home address is a good way to very quickly get a RIAA-run lawsuit.

Of course, since a few very high-profile artists have walked away from the labels – Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Madonna, etc – directly paying the artist will become more prevalent. They might even make more money, and still reduce prices for consumers. Wouldn’t that be nice? I think it’s called “cutting out the middleman.”

Recently, the first lawsuit the RIAA keeps filing against music copyright infringers went to court. And; they won:

Last week, a federal jury took less than four hours to find Jammie Thomas, a 30-year-old single mother from Brainerd, MN, liable for willful copyright infringement. When the tab—24 songs at $9,250 each—had been tallied up, Thomas found herself owing the record labels a whopping $222,000. In the aftermath of the case, it’s important to look at why the jury came to the decision it did, and why other cases may not play out the same way. There’s a great deal of misinformation out there, but since we were on the scene covering the case, we’re in a good position to talk about what did and didn’t matter when the verdict came down.

People on the internet have, predictably, railed against the judgment – and, in all honesty, 200+k is a lot of money. I believe Mrs. Thomas intends to appeal the judgment (not that she has much choice). I imagine the final payout will be far less, perhaps under $20,000.

The lawsuit Mrs. Thomas fought was about a larger moral question: are the RIAA justified in their behavior? Should they even be allowed to sue single mothers, college kids, and the like?

I find it difficult to side with the anti-RIAA crowd. People keep talking about free music – advertising supported, used as a marketing gimmick to build an audience for concerts, and so on. I’m afraid I just don’t see how that will work, long-term. The one truth a number of people overlook – and that members of the RIAA is panicking over – is that there’s not enough money in advertising and sponsorship to even equal current revenues and profits, much less expand as an industry.

The RIAA is doing everything it can to stop people from using P2P programs to ‘steal’ music. It isn’t really stealing, of course, because no one becomes worse off as a result of the theft. The potential market of people to sell to decreases, lowering demand. And those people who consistently download music are likely to otherwise be very profitable customers, because they value music as large part of their life. As a sidenote, there’s the argument that P2P markets actually expand the market of music-consumers. This is true, but so does radio; and P2P networks get people accustomed to thinking about music as free. They’re not likely to spend $20 on a CD.

Music publishers – members of the RIAA – are, in the meantime, trying to (1) shore up declining revenues (ones not caused by P2P downloaded), and (2) invent an alternative to P2P networks. That’s the main reason that music publishers cooperated so much with Apple in signing the terms of the iTunes store: it was an online store in the right place, at the right time. And while other companies have attempted to compete with the iTunes store, often by offering music ‘subscriptions’ (which are like library cards for music), they haven’t been able to steal market share. This is, of course, why Microsoft has effectively discontinued their “platform” approach to digital media – provide the DRM system, OS software, and so on – in favor of vertical integration (like the iTunes store).

The biggest, long-term problem facing members of the RIAA is the fact that the internet and digital media drops the cost of creating a copy to zero. Distribution costs become inconsequential. And publication costs – recording, etc – are dropping very fast. A band in a garage with a computer and a decent microphone can record music ‘good enough’ to play. The technology, courtesy of computers, is becoming more accessible.

So… the market niche the RIAA occupied, with a great deal of success, is rapidly shrinking. In 10 years, how much will it cost to record an album? A thousand bucks, at most. How much will it cost to distribute? Well, if you go by P2P networks, nothing. Unfortunately, P2P networks aren’t good at music discovery – though software can be built for that. Music stores, such as iTunes, may accept submissions from unknowns and add to the catalog.

I don’t think the RIAA will last. At best, they will transform into promotion companies for musicians.