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Why the RIAA Stopped Filing Lawsuitsby George Ziemann -- January 14, 2009 First of all, the RIAA has filed lawsuits after the announcement that they weren't going to do it anymore, so it was a lie. Regardless, most of the lawsuits were just to identify file sharers. They won't need that anymore -- Apple is giving them your e-mail address. It's possible that other digital retailers are embedding file ownership (customer) information as well. CNet UK gives us the following information:
First response is a feeling of privacy invasion. But my car can be traced back to me. Any major appliance worth a warranty can be traced back to me. My computer; most of my gear. It's registered to me, usually by filling our warranty forms. I always supply this information quite willingly. And most of my vinyl and CD collection has my name on it from bouts of bohemian lifestyle and shared possessions in the 70s. All I'm saying is that normally, if I buy something and the product knows that I own it, I usually view that as a cool thing. I've bought iPods as gifts. Had them engraved. Still... Fair Use -- You can share with your family and friends again. The RIAA went over the top trying to pretend that this was infringment in the first place. Lawsuits -- Almost each and every lawsuit initiated by the RIAA was an effort to determine the owner of an IP address, one of the first things that was controversial about it, especially after two or three dead people were on the receiving end. But the RIAA's biggest problem with lawsuits was that they had no way to prove that there was any relation between the person who owned an IP address at a particular moment in time was the person they saw sharing songs on Kazaa or LimeWire. The lawsuits were a dead end. The RIAA could never prove a particular person had distributed anything whatsoever unless the accused confessed. And most of them did. Their announced shift to dealing with ISPs makes perfect sense if the next phase involved identifying the owner of an email address. But they could probably just send an email. All of the RIAA's legal battles thus far have been for a) identity of file sharers and b) proof of distribution. If they download a file from LimeWire with your e-mail address in it, they've got both of those already. They still haven't attempted to prove that individual not-for-profit file-sharing is illegal, the stumbling block in that whole Sony v Betamax thing. It seems like this is more likely to lead it there. If it turns out the same as Betamax (the activity was found not to be infringing), then the RIAA's entire campaign will have been for nothing. That's where my money still is. First, though, I expect a series of lawsuits based on email addresses, only to discover that 30,000 to 40,000 iPods are lost or stolen every year, one of which had been, coincidentally, owned by the defendants. The remainder let someone borrow it. The Independent Upside -- As with everything the RIAA does, this is good news for every act on the planet whose work is NOT owned by the RIAA simply because we're not them. The RIAA is not finished trying to get their music off of P2P. I still hold out hope that P2P will do everyone a favor and accommodate them. The studios have lost their edge; they can't pick a winner. Success rate is down to 5 percent. Could be the music; could be the lawsuits, but they're not making their customers happy. The artists who do not agree with the RIAA's stance can turn this to their advantage. Say you find someone sharing your album, and you think it's a good thing. You've got the e-mail of the source. You write him or her an e-mail saying "Thank You" and offer to send them tickets to a show or a preview of some new songs or whatever. At least add them to your mailing list. At some point, people might finally realize that truly legal music is out there, and the RIAA's product is the only one that comes with a potential penalty for ownership. This is not normally considered to be a selling point. The RIAA is doing their very, very best to make sure people know their music is a legal problem. Maybe this year, they'll be successful and the public starts looking for alternatives. Maybe next year. But soon. We're going to go through the 40s again, where independents blossomed and the conglomerates were thinned out and trimmed down, for pretty much the same reasons it's happening now. The Ethical/Moral Dilemma -- For years, people have been doing the "downloading is theft" spiel using the "If I walked into a car dealer and took a car..." offense, which is really nothing at all like downloading. Of course, this was a bullshit selling point all along, since the RIAA can only possibly find someone sharing the files. Taken one step further, copyright law does not know what file sharing is, nor the difference between (or definition of) uploading vs downloading. Regardless, armed with an e-mail address and proof of distribution, the RIAA is going to have a stronger legal basis to go on. On the positive side, just like always, if you don't buy RIAA music, you can't share it, even by accident, so they'll never bother you. Certainly the serious sharers will be smart enough to make unmarked files, so this will do nothing for the "problem," it'll just catch more 10-year-olds and college freshmen with hotmail accounts. I think most file sharers give this almost no thought unless someone they know got sued. I'd bet that a great number of them are sharing and have no clue that they're doing it, much less what the ramifications are. There's really no moral dilemma, except maybe at the RIAA. They're not going to catch the intentional sharers. Instead, they'll use the contact information to initiate more petty legal action. It'll be another waste of time in the long run. So, while I was skeptical about the idea of including the e-mail address in your files, the more I think about it, it's just the next step in the RIAA's effort to drive people away. That's good for music. |
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