Music industry realizes mass lawsuits don't work
Posted
Dec 19 2008, 11:57 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
The music industry finally gets it: suing people for illegally sharing music is a bad idea.
In its effort to stop piracy, the industry became a nasty bully flanked by an army of attorneys. It filed lawsuits against suspected song-sharers and trumpeted the news to the media. It tried to send a clear message: If you download music, you're going to get busted.
But the message came across a little differently. People grew to hate the industry's strong-arm tactics. It sued a 13-year-old girl. And a dead person. And grandfathers who had no idea what downloading even was. In all, 35,000 people have been sued in the last five years.
In business terms, the results were even worse. People didn't buy more albums. The downloading continued and spread worldwide, and the number of songs traded has grown.
So now, the recording industry is trying a different tactic. Gone are the days of suing Internet providers to get the names of people who were sharing music. Now, the industry will ask those providers to forward e-mails to the customers in question. If people keep sharing the files, the industry will push to have their Internet service cut off altogether.
Who wins here? No one. But this could mean new content deals for Internet service providers like Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Qwest. Those companies might be far more likely to go after customers if they have their own music services to offer.
Here's what people are saying about the news:
Aram Sinnreich: "Instead of focusing their newly reclaimed resources and energies on promoting workable 21st-century business models for music, the labels are simply shifting their regulatory focus to a smarter place -- the bottleneck, a/k/a ISPs."
The Industry Standard: "More than anything, the campaign revealed that the recording industry didn't know how to handle the digital revolution. The major labels (and many smaller ones, too) couldn't let go of the old model -- one that leveraged people's love of music into sales of plastic discs."
Silicon Alley Insider: "But if the old plan failed to curb piracy, the new plan to pester pirates with email won't work, either. If pirates had any shame they would have bought their music legally in the first place. Nor do we think ISPs will really risk alienating their customers by cutting people's broadband service at the RIAA's bequest."
Mark Evans: "Of course, it also means that ISPs will be taking a bigger role in monitoring/policing every piece of digital traffic that flows over your connection. If you thought ISPs are overbearing now, you ain’t seen nothing yet."
Techdirt: "We're thrilled that the record labels have finally progressed to the point of realizing that mass lawsuits were a bad idea, but working out a backroom deal for a type of three strikes policy is not a particularly good solution. It's more of the same: trying to prop up an obsolete business model by a private industry unwilling or too stubborn to change with the market."
