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.”
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