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.'"
So... (Score:2, Insightful)
that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:4, Insightful)
If you were the RIAA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously...
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.
Cost Containment (Score:1, Insightful)
What the RIAA is saying is that they have instilled enough fear in the general populace to keep trading files being a household activity.
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: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:There's actually a little truth in this. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:5, Insightful)
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 the process of bombing other people!
Actually, that might be the stupidest thing I've heard in my entire life. I... I think you're causing me to have an aneuerysm [wikiquote.org].
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:i tried really (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (suing of 12 year olds, raiding of college dorms) has spurred an impressive level of paranoia among casual file sharers. A lot of my friends don't use file sharing anymore for this reason (who really wants to go to jail for downloading Dani California), and I think the availability of legal (i.e. guilt/paranoia-free) and affordable alternatives like iTunes has also been a big factor.
I think the RIAA has acheived resounding success in reducing both file-sharing demand (through PR and paranoia) and supply (by continuing to aggressively shut down pirate sites.) Their adversary is about as tough as one could imagine -- an anonymous army of millions of smart, connected users flagrantly ignoring copyright laws that governments are pretty lax to enforce -- how would *you* fight such an enemy?
The RIAA's success is pretty impressive (remember, the goal wasn't to eliminate piracy, but to cut it down to only the most hardcore/defiant subset, so that the rest of the general population goes back to paying $), but at the same time makes me die a little inside.
-fren
Watch more movies... (Score:2, Insightful)
RIAA Claims P2P Has Been Contained
That's they said about the Aliens too...
Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Snrk (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.
They always say piracy drops -when school lets out (Score:1, Insightful)
When the kids go home for the summer, or Christmas break, or spring break (probably what they are looking at in this case), trading traffic declines because the kids lose some of that school bandwidth and access to computers, or they go home and get busy goofing off outside or working summer jobs, etc.
Whatever the case, traffic drops.
Cue the **AA to stand up and claim the drop means they're suddenly being more effective at shutting down piracy. It's got almost nothing to do with the **AA and everything to do with the natural ebb and flow of the people who consume the content. They're not stopping out of fear. They stop because they're away from keyboard.
When school resumes, traffic goes right back up if not higher and stays there until the next school holiday when it drops down again, at which point the **AA will again attempt to justify its own existence by posting another press release. It's lies, damn lies, and statistics. Nothing more.
Interestingly enough, the fact that traffic goes down during these breaks says that people are finding other things to do with their time instead of stealing content, which means the stolen content is automatically devalued to the extent that whatever else the kids are doing is more important to them. Since the **AA think their content equals gold unequaled, they cannot have people thinking there is something better to do with their time than watch or listen. Instead they take credit for the drops as a matter of enforcement rather than recognizing that it's simply the audience making a choice to consume or do something that doesn't involve content -a FAR more frightening concept to accept when you're whole reason for being is to push the value of content.