In an open letter to university students on the Inside Higher Ed website, the RIAA tries to justify its recent crackdown on university students who use P2P and file-sharing services to swap music.
Mitch Bainwol and Cary Sherman, Chairman and CEO of the RIAA, and Cary Sherman, President of the RIAA, recently submitted an op-ed piece to Inside Higher Ed that seeks to better explain and also justify their recent round of lawsuits targeting college and university students around the country.
In this latest round of lawsuits, 400 of the cases were directed at college and university students around the country, which the RIAA refers to as “unprecedented” yet “necessary.”
They write that “By now, there is broad understanding of the impact from this activity, including billions of dollars in lost revenue, millions of dollars in lost taxes, thousands of lost jobs, and entire industries struggling to grow viable legitimate online market places that benefit consumers against a backdrop of massive theft.” Say what? A “broad understanding?”
Does this “broad understanding” include the millions of people who have read the study performed by researchers at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina titled “The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales – An Empirical Analysis?”
The researchers tracked music downloads over 17 weeks in 2002, matching data on file transfers with actual market performance of the songs and albums being downloaded. Even high levels of file-swapping apparently translated into an effect on album sales that was “statistically indistinguishable from zero,” they wrote.
“We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales,” the study’s authors wrote. “While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing.”
The RIAA repeatedly blames P2Pand file-sharing service for the decline in CD sales but, the real cause is unclear at best.
The study notes:
While file sharing significantly reduces the financial cost of obtaining music, it has an ambiguous theoretical effect on record sales. Participants could substitute downloads for legal purchases, thus reducing sales. Alternatively, file sharing allows users to learn about music they would not otherwise be exposed to. In the file sharing community, it is a common practice to browse the files of other users and to discuss music in file server chat rooms. This learning may promote new sales. Other mechanisms have ambiguous effects. Individuals may use file sharing to sample music, which will increase or decrease sales depending on whether they like what they hear. The availability of file sharing could change the willingness to pay for music, either decreasing it (due to the ever present option of downloading) or increasing it because music tracks have gained a new use, sharing with others. Finally, it is possible there is no effect on sales. File sharing lowers the price of music, which draws in lowvaluation individuals who would otherwise not have purchased albums. That is, file sharing primarily serves to increase total music consumption.
So is it not really the case that the RIAA really wants to try to tap into an area of theoretical sales and not actual sales?” Is not the “lost revenue” really lost THEORETICAL revenue instead of lost ACTUAL revenue?
Where are the thousands of lost jobs they speak of? Can we see pictures of these masses filling unemployment lines across the country?
“Entire industries struggling to grow viable legitimate online market places?” Is it yourself you’re referring to? The last time I checked you guys refused to embrace digital downloads for about 6 years beginning way back in 1999, so could it be that you are merely suffering from the fact that you took so long to see the future of music that services like iTunes took your place? Is it not your continued insistence of mind-numbing DRM and playback restrictions that prevents users from being able to justify more purchases if they are never able have full control over what they BUY?
The letter goes on to say that “College students used to be the music industry’s best customers. Now, finding a record store still in business anywhere near a campus is a difficult assignment at best.” Who the heck owns clunky CDs anymore? CD retailers have gone the way of record, cassette, and 8-track retailers that preceded them.
Also, could the fact that low price retailers like Wal-Mart who sell CDs for far cheaper than Tower Records or other closed retailers ever charged had something to do with it as well?
The RIAA also makes the bold assumption that file-sharing is stealing. But, isn’t it sharing and not stealing? Just like sharing mixtapes with your friends back in the day, exposing yourself and others to new artists that you amy have otherwise never heard of, file-sharing does the same thing. With the millions of already existing artists, and the thousands of new ones that appear each day, how on earth is one to hear of them all other than via your friends and collaborative efforts to share the ones worth listening too?
The letter furthers:
This problem is anything but ours and ours alone. If music is stolen with such impunity, what makes term papers any different? Yet we know university administrators very aggressively pursue plagiarism.
Sharing music is like plagiarism? Give me a break. Unless somebody is trying to lip sync the new Jay-Z album at the local cafe on campus, sharing music with your friends is nothing like plagiarism.
The piece also discusses how campus networks are there only for “educational and research purposes.” Oh really. Try to tell that to all the students who use it.
It notes:
The prevalence of this activity on our college campuses should be as unacceptable to universities as it is to us. These networks are intended for educational and research purposes. These are the environments where students receive the guidance necessary to become responsible citizens. Institutions of higher education, of all places, are where people should learn about the value of intellectual property and the importance of protecting it. Don’t administrators have an obligation to prepare students for the real world, where theft is simply not tolerated?
For a better rebuttal to this one, I decided to include the response of Ethan Sommer, a College Systems Administrator for an undisclosed university.
He writes:
I am a College Systems Administrator, and the idea that that network is intended for education and research is simply wrong. So is the idea that students don’t live in the real world. The dorms are the students’ homes. We provide them with a network connection because Internet access is a part of their daily lives, it is there for quality of life. Sure some (most) use it for education and/or research, but they also use it to post on facebook to plan events with friends and to send e-mail to relatives. We (colleges) have no more responsibility to crack down on file sharers than Comcast or Qwest does, and Comcast and Qwest do as little as possible to comply with the law. Any attempt to focus attention on college campuses is obviously a PR tactic not based in reality.
Exactly. So now if our educational institutions weren’t already having a tough enough time as it is just trying to teach our kids and provide them with an education that is important for the survival of our country’s economy and health as a democracy, they now have to worry if little Johnny freshman is sharing the new Beyonce album with his neighbor down the hall? It’d be sad if it wasn’t so disturbing.
In any event, this new letter from the RIAA once again confirms just how backward and ignorant it really is. It’s like they say, that “The more things change the more the stay the same.” The RIAA has taken “staying the same” to a whole new level. What’s funny to note about the article is that they really do miss CD stores, and that should really tell you a lot about them.
What’s also so ironic is that in trying to “educate” the next generation of music listeners about the evils of file-sharing they’re also angering the next generation of lawyers, politicians, tech-industry geeks, parents, etc., and “educating” them about the hypocrisy of the RIAA and the need for meaningful copyright and DRM reform.
Students on campuses across the country are watching as classmates get sued and harassed for thousands of dollars that they can’t afford simply because they swapped a few songs with their buddies. To boot, all the evidence indicates that the RIAA doesn’t really lose money when people share files, for how is one to know whether an actual purchase would have taken place if they otherwise had chosen not to download it? Also, if a person likes the music they get from a friend, not only do they then probably go to that artist’s concerts and support them but, they also are then likely to buy a future or existing album or other type of band merchandise.
It actually made me kind of happy to hear that they had begun this campaign to crack down on college students because now we will see widespread debate about the merits of their bullying litigation practices in classrooms nationwide, as well as in the homes of the parents of these children when they find out that their child needs $4000 USD because he shared some songs with friends. How many college students have an extra $4000 USD lying around?
What better way to see the RIAA finally crumble into irrelevance then by watching it’s tactics be debated in homes and classrooms everywhere? Forget the fact they’ve sued dead people, the paralyzed, small children, and grandparents alike, this new move by the RIAA really takes the cake in my opinion. Bravo RIAA. Bravo.
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Its too bad for the music industry that college students are well educated and well informed otherwise they may actually have a chance at shoving garbage down our throats. Its simple if they want to shape the minds of society they will have to brain wash children is that the next target ground the public school system? Oh… thats right they already tried that one and failed too.
They’re losing a hopeless battle anyway… The file sharing community is growing larger every year how are you going to sue everyone?
PM
They can’t sue everyone and they know it. They are fighting a losing battlethey simply cannot hope to win. They are going to have to come to the realization sooner or later that threats are not the answer! Nobody is apparently listening anymore anyway.
Filesharing has grown by leaps and bounds and the entertainment industry is not losing the money they want everyone to think they are! But just like the Dinosaur…they are slowly becomming extinct….I hope that happens sooner rather than later. Mabye some new form of filesharing where ARTISTS…not fat cats can be compensated.But until then things are just gonna go on as they are.
The flaw in the RIAA’s reasoning is so obvious that I can almost hear it screaming. The RIAA is assuming that if you don’t download it you’ll buy it. Now unless college students (not mention the rest of us poor folk) suddenly get a whole bucket full of money and don’t have to pay tuition buy books pay fees and housing costs…then MAYBE they might buy a few albums. But even then they still won’t be able to afford to buy ALL that they have downloaded for free. The RIAA’s main problem is using an outmoded method of distributing their product. As a matter of fact smart performers don’t even NEED the RIAA anymore because their main function was distributing a PHYSICAL object which is no longer needed: the CD. The only real effect that file sharing has had is wider recognition of artists who probably would have received little or no attention before. And they are out of the control of the RIAA. THAT’S what the record companies hate the most.
You are behind the curve on this discussion if you continue to “justify” infringement and law breaking as a legitimate market force. Who cares whether you would have purchased or not? You aren’t entitled if you don’t pay, it was never that complicated..Taking without paying was not to be a respected market force and by infringing you only empowered the cartels. Not buying was the path if you truly wanted to influence entertainment. But today the majority still buys, the minority continues to pilfer and whine “they can’t stop us” (um, yes, in fact they are making impact all over the globe now that they are getting serious) and at some point, online lawlessness will be curtailed or else we’ll live within an imposed online police state. Routine digital lawbreaking gives government little choice when you stop pilfering long enough to actually think about it. There will be a time when the loss of our fast free and private network is historically blamed on piracy, and you’ve no one to blame but yourselves.