RIAA Knows (But Tried To Hide) That Most 'Unpaid' Music Acquisition Comes From Offline Swapping
from the online-piracy-is-a-footnote dept
Lots of people have discussed this in the past, but the RIAA's focus on going after file sharing sites and online cyber lockers seemed to ignore the fact that so much music is actually shared on a person to person basis -- rather than online. But, there weren't any public numbers that showed the relative difference... until now. Torrentfreak got their hands on a "confidential" presentation put together for the RIAA by NPD, which shows pretty clearly that most of the "unpaid" music that people get comes from person to person copying, via hard drive trading and burning/ripping from others. P2P and cyberlockers actually make up a relatively small percentage:
One hopes that this doesn't presage more attacks on such person to person sharing either, but I wouldn't bet on it. Remember, we're talking about an industry which has regularly sought to plug the analog hole. When we see proposals in Congress that would effectively allow Customs officials to start searching hard drives and MP3 players, you have to wonder if the entertainment industry is really gearing up to go after this kind of sharing as well.
Of course, what would be much nicer (and a hell of a lot more effective) is if they finally woke up to the fact that this is a reality -- and that there are ways to deal with it on the product and business model sides, rather than on the enforcement side. If they put one-tenth the effort into helping out with that as they do for pushing for greater enforcement, the online music landscape would look so incredibly different and would be so much better for everyone.
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Filed Under: music, personal sharing, sharing, sneakernet, unauthorized access
Companies: npd, riaa
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The only stat that the RIAA will pay attention to
The rest will be ignored.
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Re: The only stat that the RIAA will pay attention to
Cut that - reverse it...
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Re: The only stat that the RIAA will pay attention to
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Re: Re: The only stat that the RIAA will pay attention to
And yet I still pay money for music at about the same rate I have for decades.
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Re: Re: Re: The only stat that the RIAA will pay attention to
And yet I still pay money for music at about the same rate I have for decades.
See, piracy has been harming the music industry for years. I mean, clearly, otherwise you would have been buying more all this time. Think of all the lost sales!
/troll
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Re: Re: The only stat that the RIAA will pay attention to
My biggest selling point for getting people to use Spotify instead of pirating was simply "it's easier". You can be streaming the song you want before your torrent file has found its seeds. Some in the industry still consider Spotify to be the next big evil that has to be destroyed, though...
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Who didn't copy a friend's tape back in the old analog days? This is why strict, maximalist copyright types look so ridiculous to most of us: everybody copies, and everybody always has copied and nothing new has changed. Insisting you'd never violate IP law ever reminds me of the Victorians who loudly insisted they'd NEVER masturbate.
Another thing to notice: the sales of recorded music online are up. I guess all the "sky is falling" posturing about streaming was just that.
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So what now?
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Re: So what now?
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Which is insane and something the Supreme Court should take up, but they have been exceptionally reticent to do that.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: So what now?
Every time I did I would buy me a handful of Oxys and Somas.
Even worse I kept them in my pill bottle in my shirts front pocket. To give them some credit I did put them in a forged bottle for a prescription of Oxys and Somas that did match the brand.
Even if the pharmacy was called they would never give out personal information without a warrant or consent. It's too big of a lawsuit to risk having smacked down on their asses for screwing up.
That's why I put them right in plain sight. Sometimes the hardest thing to pick up on is right in front of you. For that reason it makes it so easy to overlook.
I'm party on the weekend now lol.. I guess it's a step up from needing handfuls of pills just to get out of bed.
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Re: So what now?
All they need to do is to hire an outside consultant who will develop a profile of people who are likely to fileshare. Find a judge willing to issue mass subpoenas for discovery against everyone who matches or sort of matches the profile. P2P file sharing cases have shown that finding a suitable judge is fairly easy. They can start with a list of judges who used to be RIAA lawyers. If people don't roll over and settle, then they will have to do discovery. Discovery gets expensive for both sides, so we probably need a new law that says that in these cases the person being sued has to pay for both sides of the discovery process. We are presuming them to be guilty, so paying both sides seems reasonable. After all, the 5-or-6 strikes program requires people to pay to prove their innocences. If congress balks at doing this (those pesky SOPA tech companies might get in the way again) we could always resort to getting international trade agreements.
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Re: Re: So what now?
-Gregory House, House
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Re: So what now?
That's already done and with plenty of precedence for the average citizen. One accusation is all it takes, and you are pre-Magna Carta in America. Thanks soccer mom HOA board member tools! They couldn't have done this without your generous support and unswayable gibbering nonsense.
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Is it just me, or....
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Re: Is it just me, or....
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Re: Is it just me, or....
Oh, those are are the consumer-only licenses. They don't count because the spreadsheets are too hard and its not like it was in the 1970's. It's Internet nickels anyway and we need congress to make those numbers look real to us. Oh, and if they were "real" licenses the artists would have to be paid, silly-pirate-billy.
Sarcoff
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Re: Is it just me, or....
Well played sir. I mostly listen to streaming radio nowadays. I think that Rhapsody (etc all) really is where this is heading anyway, especially for me. Those services have the licensing built into the business model. I bought one physical cd retail last year, prob about 7 to 10 downloaded. I listened to a myriad of new music (new to me) through subscription services
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Obvious data driven solution
Record labels need to immediately stop going after digital lockers....and go after REAL lockers. Break down school doors and start going through kids' shit, since surely that's where they're hiding their cell phones, mp3 players, thumb drives, and also pot/whizbangs/bathsalts/whatever the fuck kids are doing these days to get ripped.
Yes, the digital approach hasn't worked yet; perhaps that real approach will. So go break some kneecaps, RIAA. I mean, is it really worth pretending you aren't a mafia racket anymore?
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Re: Obvious data driven solution
Sorry DH - your conclusion is not the right one - the right one is MUCH simpler..
If 65% of activity is illegal then the law is wrong.
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Cyber-Lockers account for a tiny fraction.
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Re: Cyber-Lockers account for a tiny fraction.
I would like to know one additional detail about the NPD staffer who prepared the report and the RIAA executive who commissioned it. Did they get fired or was their career damaged by producing a semi-honest report that did not support the company line? I really hope they both kept their jobs because it would be a glimmer of hope that the industry is finally beginning to understand the real problems.
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Re: Re: Cyber-Lockers account for a tiny fraction.
That letter that a bunch of old school rockers got together and made about enforcing certain aspects of the 2010 Digital Economy Act would seem ridiculous if those rockers actually knew what it would mean for the people.
They're just as bad the RIAA.
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Re: Re: Re: Cyber-Lockers account for a tiny fraction.
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With that mentality, they block out other reasons why their revenue streams may be suffering and continue a pattern of ignorance to the real problem.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqVYDwQRom4
Apple and its Apple TV basically do the same thing and others are trying to emulate that right now, except for the "artists", you know them the con artists that call themselves CEO's of labels, TV networks, studios and so forth.
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Eating Your Coffee Beans, Throwing Away The Liquid
Change "unpaid" to "marketing" and "paid" to "sales."
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Re: Eating Your Coffee Beans, Throwing Away The Liquid
http://www.erikjheels.com/153.html
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Re: Eating Your Coffee Beans, Throwing Away The Liquid
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet
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surprising numbers
Maybe it's all the rhetoric from the content industry that everyone is going broke, but I would have though that P2P and cyber lockers would make up a larger part of the illicit music sharing world.
Personally, I see IP rights as an important part of a country's economy. I believe in the IP right. That said, I don't believe in fear mongering. I don't believe in guilt campaigns against the general public with the goal of shaming them out of a given behavior.
The current system is broken because it was never made to account for the current social paradigm and the vehicle that makes it possible, the Internet.
IP rights in general and copyright in specific must be reworked to coexist with the digital landscape and the values of the people that occupy it...
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Re: surprising numbers
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Re: surprising numbers
It's because that's where all their focus is.
The difference between reality and their rhetoric is a strong indicator not that they are delusional, but that their real concern is not actually about piracy.
Their real concern is that they are losing the monopoly they had over the means of distribution. They couldn't care less about copying -- but they care quite a lot about artists being able to market their art without having to cut the labels/studios in.
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No Ears
Therefore, ears should be outlawed. All US citizens will have their ears lawfully chopped off. Then, those who pay will be fitted with a licensed EAR, and for a flat monthly rate they will be able to hear whatever they want, including music.
And those that don't have enough money to pay for hearing? Well, tough luck, they were probably pirates anyway.
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I found it interesting where Cary tries to clean up the language and skirt around the RIAA's legal stance on ripping CDs.
Also he specifically says that transferring files to a CD or device (a hard drive could be taken into consideration here) is not a legal issue for the RIAA. That kind of goes against their viewpoint within the chart there, though I wonder how they would actually handle offline swapping.
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If they fail to take this action against piracy, they are as bad as the pirates themselves and should be sued.
SAY NO TO AUDIBLE MUSIC.
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I'd guess they won't do a thing about the offline world because it's been established (judicially inclusive) that cassetes/taps/blank cds/dvds are ok. I can see them lobbying for some sort of levy on all digital devices that can play content (yes, that broad and ridiculous) but I doubt they'll try to outlaw these types of offline sharing or enforce such a thing. Their images are already heavily damaged and this would be much worse than going after file sharers in terms of public reaction.
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By Punishment of Death,
The MAFIAA will then have humming, writing, spoken words and gestures outlawed.
Either that or we kill the evil bastards now.
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Re: By Punishment of Death,
Please tell me the killing part wasn't litereal
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Re: Re: By Punishment of Death,
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Explaining the chart
In other words, they don't say if, say, the 2010 chart splits up a million acquisitions while the 2011 chart splits up a hundred.
If, say, 5,000 P2P acquisitions are replaced by 5,000 songs heard on Spotify, these charts would show that only as a drop in total P2P acquisitions with no rise anywhere else ... so every other categories' percentage would go up even if their raw numbers didn't.
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P2P is the same size of an industry as CD sales. Considering that recorded music sales are down about 50%, it's pretty easy to draw come basic conclusions.
It should also be noted that the drop in P2P from 2010 to 2011 is a pretty good indication of a shift in the public's methods for obtaining the material, and that paid downloads were increasing at that time frame.
Ripping and burning is old hat, call it Mix Tapes or what have you, and you have the same issue.
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DRM on hard drives, we come so close
May his soul rest in peace. His memorial is being held this very day.
Background at
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/26/andre_hedrick/
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Not about on-line file sharing per se
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