Thursday, October 02, 2008

EFF Report: "RIAA v. The People: Five Years Later"

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has issued an excellent, detailed report about the RIAA's 5 year old litigation campaign:

RIAA v. The People: Five Years Later

September, 2008

On September 8, 2003, the recording industry sued 261 American music fans for sharing songs on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks, kicking off an unprecedented legal campaign against the people that should be the recording industry’s best customers: music fans. Five years later, the recording industry has filed, settled, or threatened legal actions against at least 30,000 individuals. These individuals have included children, grandparents, unemployed single mothers, college professors—a random selection from the millions of Americans who have used P2P networks. And there’s no end in sight; new lawsuits are filed monthly, and now they are supplemented by a flood of "pre-litigation" settlement letters designed to extract settlements without any need to enter a courtroom.

But suing music fans has proven to be an ineffective response to unauthorized P2P file-sharing. Downloading from P2P networks is more popular than ever, despite the widespread public awareness of lawsuits.4 And the lawsuit campaign has not resulted in any royalties to artists. One thing has become clear: suing music fans is no answer to the P2P dilemma.
Complete article

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Keywords: lawyer digital copyright law online internet law legal download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie independent label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs intellectual property portable music player

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It has not put a penny into the pockets of artists.

This man feels he has truly been sold a Bill of Goods never delivered. The entire moral foundation of the RIAA instigated lawsuit campaign was that this was being done for the artists. That they have not benefited from this at all should be cause for revolt both from without, and from within, the industry.

The RIAA should also be sued for lying about this from the very beginning, although this man can't see just what that cause of action could actually be.

{The Common Man Speaking}

Anonymous said...

I was listening to National Public Radio last night at 6:30 and heard one of their news blurbs about RIAA's lawsuit campaign. It basically made the RIAA look like greedy chumps.

Looks like the word is getting out to a wider and wider audience about the crap they are trying to pull.