RIAA Spent $90 Million In Lobbying The US In The Past Decade

from the and-musicians-got? dept

If you want to know why US politicians seem to always rollover and support the preferred legislative agenda of the recording industry, perhaps it's because the RIAA has spent $90 million in lobbying in the US alone since 2000 -- and the numbers have increased as the decade wore on. In 2000 the RIAA spent $4 million in lobbying, but by 2009, it spent $17.5 million. Of course, the spend has been somewhat in inverse correlation to the success of the major record labels. Considering how often we hear people assume that correlation of file sharing stats to record label revenue means file sharing is the cause of the labels problems, shouldn't they also claim that the more the RIAA spends on lobbying, the worse the labels do as well? Perhaps the answer for the record labels is to get the RIAA to stop lobbying.

Filed Under: lobbying, riaa
Companies: riaa

Two Years After The RIAA Suggested ISPs Were Ready To Implement 3 Strikes, Most ISPs Have No Such Plans

from the lies-the-riaa-tells dept

It's been a little over two years since the RIAA dropped its strategy of suing music fans for sharing files online -- a strategy that was an unequivocal disaster for the record labels. Of course, when the news came out, the RIAA suggested that the reason they had done so was because of a backroom deal with various ISPs to implement three strikes plans. And yet, here we are, two years later with no major ISP having put in place such a policy. Greg Sandoval has been following this story closely, and his contacts at most of the major ISPs indicate no interest in putting in place such policies, and a widespread recognition that the ISPs have enough lobbying clout to push back on the RIAA if necessary.

There have been some smaller ISPs who do seem to be using a modified three strikes policy, but without the major players, it's really not that widespread. Of course, it's notable that Sandoval says his sources expect Comcast to put in place a three strikes plan once its merger with NBC Universal is done, and suddenly it decides that protecting obsolete business practices is more important than kicking off your own customers. Either way, this is notable in seeing one place where the RIAA may have actually met its match. Two years ago, the group acted as if three strikes was inevitable. Even in Sandoval's latest article, he notes:

Executives from entertainment companies brush all the bad news aside. They say the same thing they've said for two years: Just wait. They say there's a big announcement from some of the major ISPs coming around the corner.

But they've been suggesting that for two years now, and at some point you have to question if there's anything to back that up. Perhaps the RIAA is just so used to getting its way that it doesn't know how to react when it runs into an even stronger lobbying organization.

Filed Under: isps, three strikes
Companies: comcast, riaa

Limewire Seeking All The Recording Industry's Secrets

from the not-backing-down-easily dept

While Limewire lost its lawsuit in a big way to the record labels (as pretty much everyone expected), the ensuing legal fight has remained quite interesting. We've already covered the surprising move by the judge to try to explore the "real costs" of file sharing to determine damages, and in response, it looks like Limewire is trying to drag tons of other companies into the fight. Limewire is claiming that just relying on the recording industry's own documents concerning "costs" and royalties isn't enough. This makes sense, given RIAA accounting practices. However, its efforts to get others to jump in may be pretty difficult as well. A court has already rejected a request to subpoena MediaDefender, one of the industry's favored "anti-piracy" outfits, and another court is reviewing Limewire's request to compel Amazon to hand over royalty information. The indications are that it's also seeking (or will seek) similar info from Apple. While I doubt the courts will let Limewire go through with most of these subpoenas, if they do happen to get the info, we could see quite the airing of dirty laundry and details concerning various music licensing deals -- which is the last thing the RIAA wants to see happen.

Filed Under: deals, recording industry, royalties
Companies: amazon, apple, limewire, mediadefender, riaa

Judge In Limewire Case Wants To Explore How Much File Sharing Really Costs Record Labels

from the this-could-be-interesting... dept

With Limewire officially shutting down following its (totally expected) legal loss earlier this year, you might have though the case was totally over. However, the record labels quickly claimed that with the loss, Limewire should have to pay a billion dollars, which seemed a bit extreme. In typical RIAA fashion, the labels didn't feel like they should have to prove any damages at all, but that the judge should just order statutory rates. However, Limewire asked the judge to have the record labels actually prove their losses -- and, somewhat stunningly -- it appears the judge has agreed, despite the record labels' claim that trying to prove damages would represent a "crushing burden":

On Tuesday, Judge Freeman said tough noogies, with some interesting language written in the margins of a court-endorsed memo to the parties. She scribbled -- barely legible -- that Lime Wire should enjoy enough discovery to mount a defense on the damages issue. Both Lime Wire and the labels must pick 100 works -- 80 songs and 20 albums -- that each believes to be representative of the damage (real or not) that file-sharing has on the record companies. In addition, 100 more works -- another 80 songs and 20 albums -- will be selected at random.

It's not entirely clear, from there, how each side will go about showing damages, but it is interesting that the plan seems to be to look for empirical evidence to determine actual damages. I'm really surprised by this -- since my understanding was that with statutory rates, the whole idea was that the copyright holder never had to bother proving any actual damage (something I disagree with -- but it's what I thought the law said...). Either way, it certainly would be nice if there were some reasonable data to work with, so this should be worth following.

Filed Under: copyright, damages, file sharing, statutory rates
Companies: limewire, riaa

PC Mag Responds To Legacy Recording Industry's 'Complaint' Letter

from the hello,-we're-the-press dept

We recently wrote about a bizarre and mis-targeted complaint letter sent by the bosses of pretty much every old school legacy music industry lobbying/trade group, officially sent to Ziff Davis to complain about two articles concerning Limewire alternatives, suggesting that the articles were promoting unauthorized copyright infringement. Of course, as we noted, these old school recording industry bosses were so upset, they failed to notice that one of the articles in question wasn't even published by PC Mag (the target of the letter), but by PC World, a competing publication put out by an entirely different company, IDG.

Apparently, in their haste to send a complaint to the wrong publisher, these geniuses of the recording industry also failed to leave an address for a reply letter, so PC Mag's Lance Ulanoff responded with a public response letter, which basically tells all of those organizations to learn what it means to be the press reporting on a topic, as opposed to an advocate pushing a particular viewpoint:

The story isn't encouraging or discouraging anything. That's not our role. PCMag's job is to cover all aspects of technology, which includes the products, services and activities that some groups and individuals might deem objectionable. We covered these Limewire alternatives because we knew they would be of interest to our readers. We understand that some might use them to illegally download content. We cannot encourage that action, but also cannot stop it. Reporting on the existence of these services does neither.

We have, obviously, written about many online and offline services, including some that these groups might consider legitimate or "legal." However, the fact is that some users store and manage illegally gained content in music applications like iTunes. We would not stop covering these utilities simply because some users place illegal or even inappropriate content in them.

More importantly, Ulanoff points out the same thing we did in questioning what the hell these industry groups thought they would accomplish in suggesting the press not cover a story:

It worries me that the music industry took this action, because it reeks of desperation. The RIAA and other music industry organizations have spent the better part of the decade fighting the digital transition, with only a shrinking business to show for it. In recent years, though, the fist of anger has turned into at least one open hand as the music industry embraces the once shunned digital music industry. Unfortunately, that warm embrace, and the change that comes with it, are not happening fast enough. Clearly the music industry is still losing money to music piracy and even the recalibrated profit margins brought on by legal music sharing services.

It's time for these music execs to pull their collective heads out of the sand and fully acknowledge and accept all the ways their industry has changed. They also have to understand that nothing will stop technology's inexorable march forward. Things will continue to change. Music downloads and sharing will never go away. These execs have to find a way to use all that technology allows and make a business that rivals the good old days of vinyl, cassette tape and even CDs.

We will continue to cover it all--as we must.

Not a particularly surprising response, but kudos to PC Mag for sticking to its principles, and not feeling bullied by these industry folks.

Filed Under: complaints, pc mag, riaa
Companies: limewire, riaa, ziff davis

Supreme Court Won't Hear Innocent Infringer Case, Though Alito Thinks It Should

from the pay-attention dept

This is hardly a surprise. Since Whitney Harper lost the appeal in her fight against the RIAA, claiming that statutory rates should be lowered to $200 (from a minimum of $750) as she was an "innocent infringer" (something which the law allows), we noted that it was unlikely the Supreme Court would hear the case. Even after the Supreme Court asked the RIAA for more info, we still noted that it was a long shot. So, it shouldn't come as any surprise that the Supreme Court has refused to hear the case.

If you don't recall, the issue is whether or not Harper qualifies as an innocent infringer under the law. Her argument was that she believed file sharing was similar to radio and never saw any indication that she was infringing on anyone's copyright. The appeals court, oddly, ruled that the copyright notice on CDs was enough -- even though Harper never saw any of the CDs in question. This seemed like an odd ruling, though perhaps not a big enough issue for the Supreme Court to care about.

What's interesting is that at least one Justice, Samuel Alito, actually did want to hear the case and appears to agree that Harper had a really strong case:

In explaining his position, Alito appeared to agree with Harper saying there is a "strong argument" that the current law does not apply to downloaded digital music files. "[A] person who downloads a digital music file generally does not see any material object bearing a copyright notice, and accordingly there is force to the argument that [current law] does not apply."

I hadn't heard Alito opine on anything related to cppyright law before, so this is interesting. There hasn't been a big copyright case to hit the Supreme Court in a while, and there are a lot of new Justices on the court since cases like Eldred and Grokster. If there are some Justices who actually recognize that the law doesn't seem to weigh what the industry keeps insisting it says, things could get quite interesting...

Filed Under: copyright, innocent infringer, samuel alito, supreme court, whitney harper
Companies: riaa

Who's Who Of Clueless Music Industry Lobbyists Send Angry Letter To Wrong Publisher

from the nice-work-guys dept

Sometimes it just feels like the legacy music industry folks spend their time trying to make it easy for us to call them on their bizarre positions. The latest is a pretty laughable angry letter from a who's who of the organizations, who represent the past of the music industry. Signers to the letter include (among others) the heads of the RIAA, ASCAP, SoundExchange, BMI, SESAC, NMPA, AFTRA, Harry Fox and the Songwriter's Guild. The target of their scorn? Well, officially, it's the CEO of Ziff Davis, publisher of PC Mag, for publishing two articles in the wake of the shutdown of Limewire telling people about "alternatives" to Limewire. The problem? Well, beyond being totally pointless, PC Mag only published one of the articles (the one the letter seems to find less objectionable). The other article that they complained about was published by a totally different publication. Accuracy is not big with the old school music industry, it seems.

Yes, PC Mag published an article highlighting alternatives to LimeWire, just like a ton of other websites did. Anyone who was looking for an alternative to LimeWire didn't need PCMag to find them. In fact, many reports noted a noticeable increase of downloads of those alternatives pretty quickly after LimeWire went down. The lobbyists get pretty worked up about all this, though:

Let's be honest. The vast majority of LimeWire's users were interested in one thing and one thing only: downloading our music for free with the full knowledge that what they were doing was illegal. The harm done to the creative community when people are encouraged to steal our music is immeasurable. Disclaimer or no, when you offer a list of alternative P2P sites to LimeWire -- and include more of the serial offenders -- PC Magazine is slyly encouraging people to steal more music and place at risk the tens of thousands of music industry jobs -- including singers, songwriters, musicians and the technical professionals who put it all together. Even worse is offering a direct link to a "resurrected" Limewire as follows: "I went ahead and downloaded LimeWire Pirate Edition for *ahem* research purposes, and can report that it appears to be working very smoothly. In the event that you, yourself, would like to do some research, you can download the client here (direct link)."

Yes, they're quite upset about that article about the LimeWire Pirate Edition (which we wrote about as well). Only problem? PCMag didn't publish it. Nor did any other Ziff Davis publications. It was actually in PC World, which is published by IDG -- a totally different company than Ziff Davis. Now, it's not hard to confuse PCMag and PC World -- lots of people do. But when sending an angry letter condemning a publisher, you would think that maybe one of these super powerful industry lobbyist/mouthpieces would think to actually check the sources before mouthing off.

Apparently not.

Given this mistake, it should come as little surprise that the rest of the letter is also full of factually ridiculous claims, such as "job loss" numbers due to "piracy" -- numbers that have been widely debunked so many times that it's almost pathological that these groups still cling to them like some talisman. Also, it's kind of funny that they imply the publishing business would feel differently if it had also been decimated by free competition (they call it "piracy," but they mean free competition). Ziff Davis is, in fact, a shell of its former self due to exactly that situation. However, the company has been trying hard to resurrect itself by actually competing in the marketplace -- something the signers of this letter could learn from.

Of course, I'm sort of curious what these groups actually think they're accomplishing with a letter like this. If it's to pressure magazines like PC Mag (or, ahem, PC World) not to publish such stories, that won't stop the info from getting out there. It will only increase the irrelevance of those publications -- especially if they feel brow-beaten by a bunch of dinosaurs, who refuse to adapt no matter how many times it's been shown to them how they can embrace the future successfully. This really feels like the sort of letter that these guys signed onto so they can show their constituency that they're "doing something" by stomping their feet, rather than actually doing something helpful like helping those they represent to adapt and embrace new opportunities. The full amusing letter is included after the jump...

Filed Under: fact checking, journalism, lobbyists, music industry, pc mag, pc world, publishing
Companies: ascap, bmi, idg, nmpa, riaa, sesac, sga, soundexchange, ziff davis

COICA Back Up For A Vote This Week, So Universal Music Ramps Up Astroturf Campaign

from the protect-protect-protect dept

The COICA online censorship bill is back up for discussion in the Senate this week, as (thanks to pressure from the entertainment industry) they hope to get it passed during this lame duck session. As such, it should come as little surprise that Universal Music Group Distribution President Jim Urie has sent out another one of his astroturfing emails to supporters, asking them to bombard Congress critters with support for censorship. A few of you sent in the message:

Congress is listening to our message. Let's continue the fight against online piracy. If you haven't already done so, please click here to send an email to your Senator and Representative - it's quick and easy.

Jim

Oddly, Jim Urie never responded to my challenge to him, to see if we could come up with reasonable solutions that don't involve drowning out those who disagree with him. Gee, I wonder why...

Update: And... in an interesting bit of timing, the news came out today that Universal Music is planning major cuts. Perhaps instead of focusing on astroturf campaigns and running to the government to prop up their business model, they should have focused on actually innovating.

Filed Under: astoturf, censorship, coica, jim urie
Companies: riaa, universal music

When The RIAA Is The 'Standard' For Evil

from the pr-challenges dept

BearGriz72 was the first of a few of you to send in this amusing reader contest from Cracked, in which they asked readers to create images that showed "if other industries were as evil as the RIAA." Some are pretty funny. Here are two of my favorites, but go check them all out:
by The_Frederick


by JesusVsStarWars However, what really struck me about this, is how the RIAA has now been considered the absolute epitome of "evil," in a rather mainstream way. This is pretty incredible for an organization that's supposed to represent companies who provide something that many people really like. It's difficult to think of an example of an organization that has so regularly made self-defeating moves. Of course, some (including those in the RIAA) might argue that as an organization, the RIAA's job is to take the arrows for its major label members (Warner Music, Universal Music, EMI and Sony Music). However, I think that those who believe that are being a bit naive in believing that most people don't view those four labels and the RIAA in the same light.

Filed Under: evil
Companies: riaa

Jammie Thomas Verdict: This Time It's $1.5 Million For Sharing 24 Songs

from the pick-a-number,-any-number dept

The farce that is the Jammie Thomas-Rasset legal battle with the RIAA continues. In the third in a series of jury decisions, Thomas-Rasset has been hit with a $1.5 million verdict for sharing the same 24 songs, or $62,500 for each song. That is just slightly less than the last time around. From very early on, we had believed that Jammie Thomas' case was always a bad test case, and one where she likely would have been better off settling. There are important legal questions in these fights, but Thomas-Rasset's own actions greatly weakened her own case and served to distract from the important issues. However, she pushed forward. In the first trial, the jury awarded the RIAA (technically Capitol Records) $222,000, or $9,250 per song.

The judge then realized that he had made a mistake in issuing instructions to the jury and declared a mistrial. The second trial, apparently with proper jury instructions but lots more problems for Thomas-Rasset, resulted in a whopping $1.92 million verdict, or $80,000 per song. The judge then made the somewhat surprising move of unilaterally lowering the verdict down to (a still extreme) $2,250 per song. Neither side was particularly happy about this, and now the third trial is over and the jury has come close to that last award anyway. So, now what? One assumes the judge will reduce the award for the same reason he did last time and the case will finally move up a level for appeal.

The RIAA will, once again, gloat about this ruling, falsely implying that this is more evidence that "ordinary people" find such actions reprehensible, but that, again, is pure spin and ignores the reality of the situation. To be honest, this particular trial has become such a farce, that it's really not worth paying much attention to it until we get to dig into the real issues at the appeals court.

Filed Under: copyright, damages, jammie thomas
Companies: riaa