RIAA Claims P2P Has Been Contained 388
Magorak writes "USA Today is reporting the RIAA now claims that the issues surrounding P2P and piracy have been contained and are no longer as big an issue as they once were. From the article; 'The problem has not been eliminated,' says association CEO Mitch Bainwol. 'But we believe digital downloads have emerged into a growing, thriving business, and file-trading is flat.'"
Phew... (Score:5, Funny)
In other words... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Funny)
(I hope they don't forget the "go home" part this time.)
Re:In other words... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:In other words... (Score:3, Funny)
Yarrrr Matey! (Score:4, Funny)
i tried really (Score:4, Funny)
BAHAHAHAHAHAAH
Re:i tried really (Score:4, Funny)
And yet, you clicked the 'Submit' button anyway. I think this sums up 90% of the comments on Slashdot.
Re:i tried really (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:i tried really (Score:4, Interesting)
Good Project Managers are always successful (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to have a Project Manager who did that for his trainwreck projects. His projects were *always* successful. Unfinished requirements became "future enhancements". Non-working projects became "proof of concepts". Half-baked projects became "prototypes".
The wonderful thing about project schedules and requirements is nobody saves the previous version.
Nobody has ever underestimated the gullibility of upper-managers.
And nobody has ever underestimated the gullibility of people who read industry press releases.
Re:Good Project Managers are always successful (Score:3, Funny)
This reads like a summary of "eXtreme Programming Explained".
So... (Score:2, Insightful)
PP2P2P2PP2P (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, as soon as they stop downloading and listening to inane anime music [ytmnd.com].
that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:5, Funny)
Don't tell them! Let them declare victory and leave....
Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:5, Funny)
Wait... is RIAA French?
/me ducks
Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, they do have to do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, they do.
Their company exists to protect the interests of their member copyright holders against widespread unauthorized copying.
Up to now their members/customers/owners have been interpreting the "internet piracy" as lost sales - or at least more sales lost than sales gained by free advertising, etc. - and they didn't have a download business model.
In this atmosphere, if they were to declare surrender, their members/customers/owners would just let them die - or replace their execs with new ones who would attempt to carry on the fight.
But now "this stuff" is beginning to percolate into the skulls of the RIAA's customers. And many of them do have a way to profit directly from authorized downloads (thanks to iTunes and the like). So it's now possible for both the RIAA and its clientele to look at things more rationally. They can entertain the possibility that unauthorized downloading, like pre-Betamax-decision videotaping of broadcasts, might not be an unmitigated disaster - and may even be a Good Thing (especially once the for-pay alternative is available for honest people who are more than browsing.)
So the RIAA can now back off its enforcement efforts and go back to more reasonable functions, such as hunting down mass-production pirates, collecting royalties from broadcasters and those creating commercial public performances, and so on.
But on their way out they still need to declare victory - not just to save their own tails, but to keep some pressure on downloaders to go to the commercial services and pay the 99 cents, and to keep in the public mind the idea that they SHOULD do so.
(Of course they can claim to their clientele (with some justification) that their efforts to date are what branded this concept into "the public mind" in the first place.)
Meanwhile, now that the clients see that the "piracy" isn't going to sink their ships they can get on with the job of making product and making money off it, and taking advantage of the new medium to make even more profit.
New media mean new opportunities for profit, and these opportunities are greater than the (largely illusory) "losses" from the unauthorized copying they enable. This was shown with piano rolls, wax tube recordings, disk recordings, radio broadcasting, and tape recordings.
Now it has been shown with digital recordings and network distribution. But it's sufficiently counter-intuitive to The Suits that they have to learn it fresh every time.
Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, they're trying to use it as a tactic to convince people that everybody else has given up on using p2p, and they're better off switching to the 'legit' ways of doing it.
Sometimes, trying to affect people's perceptions is as effective as trying to affect their actions.
Everything the *AA's says is all about spin and perception!
Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, people who can name 5-10 file sharing programs off the top of their head, or know what warez or IRC are, will always be able to track down what they're looking for (and probably weren't formerly spending as much cash on CDs anyway). But think about your less computer-savvy friends. The fear mongering by the RIAA et al (suin
Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:3, Informative)
Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:3, Funny)
It rather seems that p2p shaped your notion of what exists.
Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:5, Funny)
"These are not the nodes you're looking for"
If you cannot win... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If you cannot win... (Score:3, Funny)
Good: we want them to think they have won (Score:5, Interesting)
All we want them to do is quit trying to stomp out every conceivable method of information transfer in the name of stopping piracy, and go back to their executive boardrooms and golf courses.
Re:Good: we want them to think they have won (Score:5, Interesting)
No, they would have won if former users of P2P were now downloading songs from paying sites, which is probably not the case. Have all the people willing to "illegaly" (meaning "against MAFIAA rules") download music moved to ITunes or such? I doubt it. What we'll see is an upcoming huge drop in CD sales in favor of downloaded music, but will the gross income increase? I am not sure.
They're losing the battle they started. Just as in project management, to keep face when a project is majorly failing, declare a success mid-course then terminate the project before big money gets lost.
It's a trick. Get an axe. (Score:5, Interesting)
Kind of like this... (Score:5, Funny)
TMS - Typical Movie Scientist
TMG - Typical Movie General
TMG: Doc, what's the status of the plague?
TMS: As of an hour ago, the virus has infected every living thing on Earth.
TMG: But it hasn't spread since then?
TMS: Well, no, but--
TMG: Then it's been contained! Victory is ours!
Meanwhile... (Score:5, Funny)
RIAA says its contained? (Score:5, Funny)
Not flat (Score:5, Funny)
I actually think of it more as a rectangular prism....
Re:Not flat (Score:2, Funny)
file-trading is flat.
I actually think of it more as a rectangular prism....
No! It's round. If we sail far enough, we'll end up on the other side! All I need is more funding to sail the P2P seas and I'll bring back free digital music from India.
Re:Not flat (Score:4, Funny)
I actually think of it more as a rectangular prism....
And if the RIAA had its way it would be a rectangular prison.
was the guy... (Score:5, Funny)
Any chance there?
Re:was the guy... (Score:3, Funny)
If you were the RIAA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously...
Re:If you were the RIAA... (Score:2)
Re:If you were the RIAA... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If you were the RIAA... (Score:5, Interesting)
The perception that the *AA is going away is somewhat flawed. Sure, like many companies in the past, they are hanging onto outmoded business models and many individual companies are doomed to shrink. But the 800 lb gorillas of the past, such as IBM and Xerox, didn't go away - they just reinvented themselves and shrank somewhat, while other companies took innovations that the gorillas were too thick to see as viable and ran with them.
To say that their entire business is going to disappear is to overlook the fact that most people like the music that they sell, and like buying their albums. Sure, I have friends who can record songs that sound as good as any studio-polished single in their bedrooms on commodity equipment. Certainly, I watched Star Wreck: The Pirkinning, and I know that fan films can be made at a fraction of the cost of a real motion picture, with more thigh-high boots and miniskirts, and still look great. But if you indulge in these things, it means you're an avant-garde free content nerd, and you are in the minority. I know exactly how out-of touch I am, because I'm looking at last year's top 50 and I don't have a clue what 95% of them are. But clearly somebody's buying them, and I suspect that these people would be more than happy to download portions of these songs as ringtones onto their Verizon mobile phone. Whole droves of teenagers are listening to something with the nonce-words "Numa, Numa" in it, and buying it on ITMS as well.
Imagine that. I'm 23 this Thursday, I have about five computers, I write for a living, play the guitar, have a reasonably active social life, and I feel like both a luddite and a hermit. I'm two steps away from Abe Simpson. Is this what all of adulthood is like?
Anyway, what is going to contract is the retail distribution channels, such as movie theaters and music stores. The cable companies and the telcos will pick up the slack like I've hinted at above. However, since the content owners still have the majority of the market and you still have to do business with them to have a prayer of making it anyway, they will continue to snatch up new artists and buy their souls.
Re:If you were the RIAA... (Score:3, Interesting)
I dunno, but I've felt that way since before I was 23. Then again, I'm a recluse anyway, I've never been all that social, although I do very well in most highly social situations. (Slashdot doesn't count, this isn't the real world, it's a rolepla
I think you're right, but go a little further... (Score:3, Interesting)
But this doesn't kill the "music industry". There will always be a need for a legitimation structure -- an industry that sifts the amateurish crap from the high-quality art. But it won't be done through "push" marketing: "Britney is the next Madonna (as if Madonna was a
Re:If you were the RIAA... (Score:2)
Besides going to Disneyworld??
Re:If you were the RIAA... (Score:2)
Dress in black clothing wearing my sister's mascara while cutting my wrist and whimpering? My teacher told me it was "down the street" not "across the highway"...
Re:If you were the RIAA... (Score:4, Funny)
Seriously...
In other news... (Score:2)
Is this anything like how we won in Viet Nam? (Score:2)
Nice to see wrong statistics propagated (Score:5, Interesting)
Overall the article is rather blah, I'm sort of surprised that they didn't throw in there something about the lose of some umpteen billion dollars that they would have made if it weren't for illegal file sharing...the good myth of each download is a lost sale.
Re:Nice to see wrong statistics propagated (Score:5, Funny)
"Nearly 10 million people are online, swapping media, at any given time," he says. That May figure is up from 8.7 million people in 2005, he says.
Apparently a 15% growth rate per year is what the music industry calls 'contained'. I wish someone would come and 'contain' my savings account...
Re:Nice to see wrong statistics propagated (Score:3, Informative)
I think a lot of people who've read the article are making a few assumptions:
The RIAA probably believes that it's in their interest to state that file trading is flat, as their agenda is to curb piracy and increase sales.
But keep in mind that BigChampagne is a for-profit company. Tracking P2P usage is what they do. They generate reports on
Translated from "Suitese"... (Score:2)
Re:Translated from "Suitese"... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Translated from "Suitese"... (Score:2)
I wasn't saying I cared, I was just translating.
But I honestly wouldn't go hog wild again because you know the minute they get a reason they'll attack like rabid dogs again.
Re:Translated from "Suitese"... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most people are downloading from iTunes, and we are making money so we don't care much anymore.
Re:Translated from "Suitese"... (Score:2)
Your alternate translation is also valid.
Finally!! (Score:2)
We as a society are safe from those filesharing twelve year olds and grandmas. Thank-you RIAA!!
/. has been hacked (Score:5, Funny)
It's not April 1st.
Hmmm... Only logical explanation is that
--Keith
Re:/. has been hacked (Score:5, Funny)
>
> Hmmm... Only logical explanation is that
We'll find out soon enough
It's completely and utterly true (Score:5, Interesting)
So he is right; P2P growth is flat - in exactly the same way TV purchase growth is flat.
Note any shortage of TVs around the first world? alas not...
Re:It's completely and utterly true (Score:5, Interesting)
There appears to exist in the RIAA mind the notion that if legal downloads rise, illegal downloads must fall.
I think the derives from a failure to understand that the majority of illegal downloads *would never have otherwise been a legal purchase*.
Naturally, if you imagine the two are precisely correlated, if you see that the rate of illegal download growth has leveled out, you might - if you wanted to imagine it were so - consider that the problem had been "contained", especially since the number of legal downloads is rising (naturally, since it began recently at zero).
In reality of course it simply means the problem has maximized and naturally, with no relation to the RIAA in any way, the number of users has levelled out.
The RIAA just doesn't get it, it seems.
Of course, we have to consider how the RIAA are measuring numbers - absolutely nothing is said about this. Are they still fixated on the now-defunct Kazaa network? looking on eMule right now, there appear to be approximately 19 (nineteen) million concurrent users. On one P2P network, just at this moment. In the evenings UK time it's about 26 (twenty-six) million.
It's quite likely their measuring method is deliberately deceptive, in which case the statement means even less that it does.
Re:It's completely and utterly true (Score:3, Interesting)
"I think the derives from a failure to understand that the majority of illegal downloads *would never have otherwise been a legal purchase*."
Failure to understand, or failure to acknowledge? It's fun to say "The RIAA is a bunch of doodyheads" and all, but I think they're capable of hiring people who tell them the truth. How they spin this, however, is a different matter. I think it's very dangerous to assume that the collective employees of the RIAA are simply too stupid to understand this. Underest
Re:It's completely and utterly true (Score:2)
Re:It's completely and utterly true (Score:2)
There's actually a little truth in this. (Score:3, Insightful)
Your average user is using LimeWare and used to typing words into a search box. Doing this these days will usually yield you one or two real copies, and hundreds of viruse files or trojans.
Re:There's actually a little truth in this. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:There's actually a little truth in this. (Score:2, Interesting)
Doing this these days will usually yield you one or two real copies, and hundreds of viruse files or trojans.
I just tried this on Gnucleus: I searched for "Hips Don't Lie" from "Shakira". I'm not a fan or so, it was just the first popular thing that popped up in my mind. After a few seconds waiting I got over 3000 hits, then I just sorted on size in reverse order. Those 200KiByte zip files and exe files won't fool anyone that knows that a regular MP3 is about 3MiByte. Now sort on "Distribution" (
Re:There's actually a little truth in this. (Score:2, Interesting)
But in all honesty, I don't really care about that type of filesharing as much anymore. File sharing has moved beyond that into social networking, how many people now send MP3's over AIM or MSN. I constantly recommend albums to friends and they recommend them to me. Maybe it has to do with me already having a lot of music and I'm just searching
Douglas Adams... (Score:2)
Sounds familiar... (Score:2)
Snrk (Score:5, Insightful)
Digital downloads have emerged into a growing, thriving business despite your lot's best efforts to screw it all up.
Re:Snrk (Score:5, Insightful)
Mission accomplished! (Score:4, Funny)
Well, if you can't win, just say you won and rely on your opponent to not contradict you.
Believe the RIAA When... (Score:2)
Does this mean that their lawsuit campaign is now over? That's when I'll actually believe a statement like theirs above.
They must of taken delivery of..... (Score:2)
Next (Score:3, Funny)
Then, the RIAA stops chasing P2P downloaders.
Next, Hell freezes over.
What a day!
What a bunch of ostriches... (Score:2)
Whoops, sorry, I have to go to the library to RIP CDs with my laptop before it closes...
No one made an unstoppable Gnutella yet (Score:2)
It is all flat (Score:2)
Hot Diggity! (Score:2)
Yeah, I didn't think so either.
In unrelated news (Score:2)
Sure, piracy has been contained... (Score:2)
Related joke (Score:3, Funny)
"We're safe! The animals are contained!"
I for one... (Score:3, Funny)
Hmmmm.... (Score:3, Interesting)
So in other words, they're handing over the job of showering their customers with lawsuits to the MPAA. What's that, a relay race? Share the bad press for stomping on people's rights so nobody gets hurt too much?
So no DRM? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Watch more movies... (Score:2, Insightful)
RIAA Claims P2P Has Been Contained
That's they said about the Aliens too...
The guns...they've stopped! (Score:2)
of course they won (Score:2)
Dslreports just linked the story to a top 100 list (or something) from piratebay. I had no idea. Mostly they were huge compilations. 500M - 2G at a pop times 100 files times hundreds(or more) of downloads sounds like ALOT of music to me just from piratebay. Interesting much of it was old including a couple 60's top 100 files.
Declare victory and go home (Score:2)
Re:First Contained Post (Score:4, Funny)
Re:First Contained Post (Score:5, Funny)
Cheers.
Re:The RIAA are correct... (Score:2)
Shee-it. I just finished downloading every title off WXPN's 885 best albums of all time. Nice little eMule control script I wrote to get albums via a csv file.
Re:Lessons learned? (Score:2)
They may claim a losing victory, but by no means is their war over. You'll see expensive law suits coming up soon. They'll continue to drain the bank accounts on futile law suits. They'll become the SCO of media.
Re:They won? (Score:3, Insightful)
I just want to make sure that that's really what you're saying. Because that might actually be the stupidest, most misguided statement I've ever read in all of my years on the internet. I suddenly understand why the draw of 27 virgins is capable of convincing men to kill themselves in t
Re:sounds familiar (Score:2)
Re:Jack Bauer (Score:2)
Shhh! You'll blow our cover!
*carefully puts on tinfoil hat*