OPINION & EDITORIAL
Music downloads still safe
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Also by Jack Garigliano:
- Tuition raise continues daunting trend (October 25, 2007)
- Republicans overreact to UW e-mail (October 11, 2007)
- Music downloads still safe (September 28, 2007)
- College Dems do it dirty, focus on 'ass'inine issues (September 13, 2007)
- Tibetan flag flap should blow over (May 2, 2007)
Related Stories:
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- Just do it, DoIt (October 9, 2007)
- Advice for UW's advising (October 30, 2001)
- Students notice Grokster verdict (September 13, 2005)
- Music industry must tune up to reality (February 6, 2003)
by Jack Garigliano
Friday, September 28, 2007
The Recording Industry Association of America reared its ugly head last week for the second time this year. The trade group flung settlement letters at 22 universities, targeting 403 college students accused of illicitly distributing copyrighted music over peer-to-peer networks such as Limewire and Bearshare. One of these letters targeted a UW-Madison student and 61 more went after students across the UW System. The recipients of these letters can choose to respond by paying up to $3,000 to the RIAA as penalty for copyright infringement or ignore them and face the RIAA in a much pricier court case.
This is not the first wave of settlements to swamp universities. Last March, the RIAA flooded college students, including 16 from UW-Madison, with these letters,. Yet the current pool of settlement letters, washing up a scant six months after the last one, arrives in a much different environment than the previous set.
Over the summer, while you were enjoying a relaxing game of badminton in your grandmother's backyard, the RIAA fought — and lost — several court battles against those who decided to drag the case to court. One of these cases, Interscope v. Rodriguez, set a precedent influencing subsequent lawsuits, including two currently being waged by the RIAA. The federal judge tackling the Interscope case ruled that the RIAA — representing the record label Interscope — could not decisively prove who had downloaded or distributed the copyrighted files. The RIAA was only able to show when the offense was committed at a particular IP address.
For all the court knew, a total stranger could have snuck into Rodriguez' house in the dead of night and cheekily downloaded an Audio Bully's remix with Rodriguez none the wiser. Interscope v. Rodriguez serves a severe blow to the RIAA, who used its defeated arguments in all its prior court cases. With more fodder needed for its cases, the RIAA is hemorrhaging money by combing for more proof and appealing lost cases. It has even been forced to reimburse some of the defendants' legal fees after a lost case, such as in Atlantic v. Andersen, which was decided just last Saturday.
The RIAA doggedly continues to pursue settlements despite the glaring impracticality of legal action, hoping to intimidate enough people who can't afford a lengthy legal battle into accepting settlement letters out of court. Meanwhile, peer-to-peer networks are thriving, new as-yet-undetectable methods of file sharing are growing and CD sales have dropped 25 percent since 2000, according to Nielsen Soundscan. Digital singles purchased online are not making up for the lost revenue, despite a whopping 65 percent increase in online single sales from 2005 to 2006, and the RIAA is amassing a sizeable amount of hostility from Joe Consumer.
As the RIAA ruthlessly hunts for prey like some savage dinosaur desperate to keep the smaller mammals from ganging up on him, it's easy to forget that the RIAA has every right to pursue file sharers. File sharing is, quite frankly, illegal; just because proof of the crime is difficult to obtain does not mean the crime doesn't exist. The RIAA is justified, at least legally, in stomping after the perpetrators. However, a rabid enforcement of the law is simply not in the RIAA's best interests.
Court battles are becoming harder to wage and are not assuaging the shrinking of the corporate music industry. Instead, the RIAA must recognize that today's generation, suckled on the boundless information of the Internet, expects much freer access to its media. The New York Times knew that when it started providing its entire content online for free last week Wednesday. NBC knew it when it planned to offer its entire schedule via free Internet downloads, instead of iTunes' pay-per-episode program. The RIAA still doesn't get it.
The once-dominant association no longer enjoys the stranglehold on the music industry it once did. Listeners now have an exponentially greater number of avenues to discover music that appeals specifically to them, instead of relying largely on the RIAA to advertise and market bland pop designed to appeal to as large an audience as possible. Buyers can purchase music online, cutting CD distribution down to a level with which the RIAA is not comfortable. Even online, the CD becomes less lucrative as buyers can buy just one or two songs off the entire album, skipping the parts of the album that he or she finds uninspiring. In other words, the RIAA can no longer rely on a single hit single to sell entire CDs.
I could easily prattle on ad infinitum, but the final point remains: The RIAA will never loom as large as it did before the Internet's heyday, no matter how hard it tries to maintain that size. It would do much better to change its evangelical mindset and adapt a more Taoist view — stop fighting, accept change and adapt as best you can to your new environment.
Jack Garigliano (garigliano@wisc.edu) is a sophomore majoring in English.
David Taylor (September 28, 2007 @ 8:05am):
The reason online purchases of music isn't working is because it is almost as expensive as buying a CD. If people would realize by making songs unbelievably cheap they would sell gazillions more and probably make a lot more money than doing it this way. Why can't a song be 10 or 25 cents? If it was that cheap I would buy a lot more songs and so would a lot of other people.
Anonymous (September 28, 2007 @ 10:17am):
God, it's like they want you to pay for their product instead of stealing it. The nerve.
Anonymous (September 28, 2007 @ 11:32am):
Anyone who actually believes copywrite infringement is a crime, theft, has no idea what copywrite law actually is. Sorry doesn't work that way. RIAA may tell you that your stealing but its not in a court of law.
Mike Pruden (September 28, 2007 @ 4:08pm):
Good article. It's good to know that some of the RIAA's Stasi/Gestapo tactics are not working.
And one more thing: it's not 'copywrite,' but 'copyright,' just as there is a 'copyleft. '
Anonymous (September 28, 2007 @ 4:20pm):
You are obtaining something for free that you would otherwise pay for. How is that not stealing?
Anonymous (September 28, 2007 @ 4:35pm):
What's a "copywrite" law?
Anonymous (September 28, 2007 @ 6:35pm):
"You are obtaining something for free that you would otherwise pay for."
No, I'm obtaining something for free that I wouldn't otherwise pay for.
Anonymous (September 29, 2007 @ 11:22am):
Keep up the coverage.
Anonymous (September 30, 2007 @ 9:59am):
I don't think the implication that downloading music is still safe is a fair one. While you discuss the few cases that the RIAA has lost, you fail to discuss the tens of thousands where they have won judgment or settlement, including 100% of them in Wisconsin. One of the 16 this spring fought to keep their identity secret and lost.
As well, in Interscope v. Rodriguez the judge didn't dismiss the case, just asked the RIAA to amend its complaint. The case against Ms. Rodriguez is still pending.
Anonymous (October 1, 2007 @ 11:50pm):
makes no difference, REAL artists has never made good money after signing with athe label.
for RIAA just like it for a lots of different businesses, its the 21st century things change they have no choice but have to learn to go with the time.
so they busted several 100's people from the sevaral million, well thats an achievement.
be safe pumpkins online
Anonymous (October 5, 2007 @ 10:15pm):
music should be about expression not money. File-sharing just makes it easier for more people to listen to your music and thats what should be important. But then again what do I know I'm only the drummer.
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