EFF condemns music download lawsuits
The policy of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to sue users caught downloading music illegally has done nothing to slow the trade of copyrighted music on peer-to-peer networks, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
Here is a short excerpt from the report:
The music industry initially responded to P2P file sharing as they have always responded to disruptive innovations: they loosed the lawyers on the innovators, in hopes of smothering the technology in its infancy. Beginning with the December 1999 lawsuit against Napster, the recording industry sued major P2P technology companies one after the other: Scour, Aimster, AudioGalaxy, Morpheus, Grokster, Kazaa, and iMesh.5 This despite the fact that these same technologies were also being used for non-infringing purposes, including sharing of authorized songs, live concert recordings, public domain works, movie trailers, and video games.The legal attacks on P2P technologies were initially successful in the courts.6 But as it was winning the legal battles, the recording industry was losing the war. After Napster was shut down, new networks quickly appeared. Napster was replaced by Aimster and AudioGalaxy, which were then in turn supplanted by Morpheus and Kazaa, which were in turn eclipsed by eDonkey and Bit Torrent. The number of file sharers, as well as the number of P2P software applications, just kept growing, despite the recording industry’s early courtroom victories. More recently, music fans have been turning to new so-called “darknet” solutions, such as swapping iPods, burning CD-Rs, and modifying Apple’s iTunes software to permit direct downloading.
“The lawsuit campaign has enriched only lawyers, rather than compensating artists for file sharing,” the EFF declared in a 25-page report (PDF). “One thing has become clear: suing music fans is no answer to the peer-to-peer dilemma.”
The EFF claims that traffic on peer-to-peer file-sharing services has ballooned since the RIAA began suing individual users, from 3.3 million monthly users in August 2003 to more than 8.8 million by June 2005.
The recording industry trade group is also singling out a small group of copyright violators and saddling them with unnecessarily steep financial penalties, the EFF lamented.
“There is no question that the RIAA’s lawsuit campaign is unfairly singling out a few people for a disproportionate amount of punishment,” reads the report.
“Tens of millions of Americans continue to use peer-to-peer file sharing software and other new technologies to share music, yet the RIAA has randomly singled out only a few for retribution through lawsuits.”
Instead of pursuing action against individual users, the EFF recommended that the RIAA and its members should adopt policies to bring customers back to purchasing music.
David Ingram> or perhaps seek out and adopt new business models which are aligned to the new generation of consumers’ behaviors
Lowering music prices and abandoning digital rights management technology would provide a far better incentive for users to purchase legitimate copies of music, the group suggested.
“If the recording industry is serious about luring music fans away from peer-to-peer networks and other methods of sharing, it should focus on dangling a tastier carrot, rather than swatting more individuals with the lawsuit stick, ” said the report.
via: VNU net