Will Investors Pressure RIAA To Change Its Ways?

from the we-can-hope dept

Mon, Oct 1st 2007 12:48pm — Timothy Lee

The Motley Fool had an article last week predicting that the RIAA will soon be forced to abandon its lawsuit-happy business strategy, as a number of lawsuit targets have not only been winning in court but also getting their legal fees covered by the recording industry. The article makes a lot of points that Techdirt has been making for years, but a couple of things are particularly interesting about the article. First, the Motley Fool is a mainstream investment site that's read by a ton of people on Wall Street. If the financial press starts writing stories about how the lawsuits are a waste of money, these companies could start to feel increased pressure from their shareholders to find a new strategy. Secondly, the article makes an important point about the effects of file-sharing on musicians: file-sharing can hurt artists by reducing their sales, but it can also help them by getting the word out about their music. The former effect is more important to the superstars, who are already famous. But for up-and-coming artists, the benefits of greater exposure greatly outweigh any losses from their (already small) sales. Since most musicians aren't superstars, the rise of file-sharing may actually help the average artist, by flattening out the distribution of music revenues: Justin Timberlake won't be as rich, but up-and-coming bands will find it easier to reach new fans.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: riaa, wall street
Companies: riaa

9 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 1 Oct 2007 @ 1:17pm

File sharing should be started by the copyright holder, and no one else. I could be a very good way to create buzz for artists without a distribution deal.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Wolfger, 1 Oct 2007 @ 1:24pm

broken record
Tim (and all other Techdirt writers), are you hoping that by repeating the same thing over and over and over again, you can change the way people think? Because seriously, those of us who "get it" already are (I think) really getting tired of hearing the same old same old, time after time.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Wacko, 1 Oct 2007 @ 1:30pm

The Offspring
The Offspring put up their full album on their web page for free downloads saying that if anyone wanted it they could grab the songs, but if they liked it they can go buy their album in stores, but the album comes with extras that you can't download.
I think that's brilliant
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 1 Oct 2007 @ 1:33pm

These RIAA lawsuits against individuals are just plain stupid. Most can't pay the judgements so there's no recovery for the labels or the artists. It is simply a scare tactic that clearly isn't working.

If Radio Head's attempt to remake the music profit paradigm is successful then all these RIAA terror tactics are moot. Many musicians are beginning to understand they can make a decent living by performing and related merchandising. The music is simply 'advertising' to invite people to the performance.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Frenchy Frog, 1 Oct 2007 @ 1:47pm

Re: broken record
Man, nobody is forcing you to read these news stories. If you don't want to keep reading "the same thing over and over and over again", then stop reading it! I enjoy staying on top of what's going on, and I appreciate reading about all the newest developments. Go complain to the RIAA if you don't like to keep seeing their foolishness.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 1 Oct 2007 @ 1:56pm

Broken Record is probably the lead riaa dummy thats been hired for 17 cents a post on any blog that mentions the riaa.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Beefcake, 1 Oct 2007 @ 3:39pm

RIAA Trafficks In Confusion and Sleight of Hand
The RIAA will just go in front of Congress and point to this article as a glowing endorsement of the need for enhanced digital rights legislature. "You see? This article states without question that with todays's Constitutional laws of evidence we can't protect ourselves from the market, so you obviously need to change these laws so we can go after the lawbreaking, grannies/kiddies/students/the dead and punish them for their high crimes against our poor, starving clients".

And Congress will buy the entire nonsensical Chewbacca-defense argument because they don't know what the heck anyone is talking about with this stuff, and don't read things like bills and security assessments or articles-pointed-out-to-them-as-evidence.

Confused? Don't worry, so is your Congressman.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Angus, 2 Oct 2007 @ 3:46am

9/24/07?
This was posted over a week ago and you just find it? sigh.... I thought it looked familiar.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Juanito, 2 Oct 2007 @ 7:20am

The Chewbacca defense strategy!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Motley Fool is a great site, they've helped shape my investment choices... It almost looks like they analysed the balance sheets and income statements and came across some huge HUGE legal expense charges, with more money going towards lawyers than coming in from fines. Music was meant to be shared between friends. GigaTribe is a great way to share entire albums with friends: http://www.gigatribe.com
[ link to this | view in thread ]