Record labels are still pointing the finger at illegal filesharing as contributing to the dent in music-industry profits. Never mind that the whole scene is changing and these just can’t keep up.
Warner Music Group Corp reported a 58% drop in fourth quarter net income. The reason? Lost CD sales and the increase in illegal filesharing. Don’t think that Warner lost money — that’s not the case. All that’s happened is that the company has made less money. It still raked in $5 million in the fourth quarter.
CD sales are plummeting and there is speculation that digital-music sales are not increasing at a sufficient rate to make up for the lost revenue. Warner is trying to make the world spin backwards to make up its lost profits, but it faces an impossible task. The way people get their music is changing.
The fallout from this will likely see the RIAA, of which Warner is a member, step up in its campaign to bring filesharers to justice. Come on Warner, get with the times. How many more Jammie Thomases do we have to put up with?
Need another reason to hate the RIAA? How about this: the RIAA has been freaking students out at all of the Ivy League schools — except Harvard. That’s right, the RIAA is too scared to go after Harvard students in its never-ending campaign to stop filesharing and free music downloads.
In its latest initiative, the RIAA is targeting schools such as Columbia University, Duke University, Dartmouth College, University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Princeton, and Brown University. So why isn’t the RIAA picking on Harvard students?
Believe it or not, Harvard’s Professor of Law Charles Nesson and John Palfrey, clinical professor of law, stated that:
This Spring, 1,200 pre-litigation letters arrived unannounced at universities across the country. The RIAA promises more will follow. These letters tell the university which students the RIAA plans on suing, identifying the students only by their IP addresses, the “license plates” of Internet connections. Because the RIAA does not know the names behind the IP addresses, the letters ask the universities to deliver the notices to the proper students, rather than relying upon the ordinary legal mechanisms.
Universities should have no part in this extraordinary process.
Harvard hates the RIAA! Jonathan Lamy from the RIAA said that filesharing “theft triggers a harmful domino effect throughout the music community - thousands of regular, working class musicians and others out of work, record stores shuttered, new bands never signed.”
Yes, that’s right — students go broke and can’t pay for their education because they are being sued while working-class musicians don’t get signed — all because of filesharing. Who writes this stuff?
A lawsuit filed in Alameda County has accused cable-giant and Internet-service-provder Comcast of meddling with the Internet to block or slow down access to filesharing on the Internet.
A subscriber to Comcast living in the Bay Area, San Francisco, has alleged that Comcast has been limiting access to P2P filesharing service, such as Ares and Limewire.
Comcast’s claims of supplying lightning-fast Internet speeds have also been thrust into the spotlight.
Although a Comcast spokesman denied that the Internet service provider had been blocking P2P filesharing services, he went on to say that Comcast has the right to “prevent heavy users from slowing down speeds over the entire network”.
Essentially, the Comcast spokesman admitted that the company has been meddling. In a bizarre twist, the complaint has alleged that Comcast sends “hidden messages to computers that are running filesharing applications” to cause them to cease their operations.
What do you think? Comcast’s wary response points to something not being right here, but perhaps this conspiracy theory is a bit out there. It remains unclear why Comcast would restrict access to P2P services.
Ever resourceful and full of surprises, the world’s most famous filesharer, Jammie Thomas, is trying to drum up support for her plight by selling thongs, T-shirts and mugs with the “Free Jammie” logo.
The world was outraged when those evil RIAA folks sued Jammie Thomas to the tune of $220,000. The T-shirts are on the market for about $20 a piece, while the thongs are just $9.99, meaning that Jammie is going to have to sell, well, a lot of thongs.
Jammie Thomas’ lawyers are all set to launch an appeal against Jammie’s conviction of sharing an outrageous 24 songs on the Internet. The single mother who earns less than $40,000 a year could sure do with some luck after the RIAA made an example out of her.
While Jammie Thomas could have settled out of court for a few thousand dollars, she chose to stand up for herself and battle it out with the world’s biggest record companies. Smart move or total blunder — only time will tell.
The campaign to support Jammie Thomas has so far raised only $16,000, which is hardly surprising given that this whole scenario is based around getting stuff for free. Jammie Thomas’ appeal is likely to cost about a year’s salary for the poor woman.
If you want to buy a Jammie Thomas thong, head over to her online shop.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a US trade group comprising major companies like record labels and distributors. The companies that make up the RIAA control about 90% of the US music industry. The RIAA is one of the most dedicated opponents of filesharing, often targeting P2P filesharing programs like Limewire.
Despite the RIAA’s futile drive to bring users of filesharing software to “justice”, programs like Ares get bigger each day. Perhaps the 20,000 or so lawsuits brought up by the group are part of the reason why the RIAA was named “Worst Company in America 2007″ earlier this year.
Thirty-two companies were up for the title and more than 100,000 people voted in the poll conducted by The Consumerist. The RIAA beat stiff opposition from the likes of Wal-Mart, McDonalds and Microsoft. The RIAA is even more hated than last year’s winner, Halliburton.
The message is clear that Americans have not taken kindly to the music industry’s lashing out at filesharers. Only time will tell if the RIAA will ever come to its senses and stop suing people for sharing music on the Internet. The RIAA represents the interests of the music-industry business and nothing else — it does not stand for the rights of music fans.
At the moment there is an educational bill in the House of Representatives that, if passed, would turn US colleges and universities into copyright police forces to prevent the use of P2P filesharing. Obviously, the RIAA is all over this bill. If passed, universities who do not uphold the bill risk losing financial aid.
It’s clear why the RIAA is America’s most-hated company. Students have enough to worry about — like their education for one thing.
Students seem to be hitting the filesharing headlines a lot recently. In Indiana, university officials have sent out an email to students telling them that filesharing is OK — as long as they don’t share their files. The top dogs at Indiana University (IU) came up with the idea that downloading files copyright files in itself is not the problem.
IU warned students that they could be sued for thousands of dollars for sharing files using bit torrent or P2P filesharing software, such as Ares and Limewire. If the files students download are kept for personal use, however, IU says that there isn’t as much of a legal issue.
What IU is effectively saying is, “Download, but don’t share.” It is true that record companies have been known to target prolific filesharers as opposed to prominent downloaders. Hats off to IU for understanding the situation and for covering students’ asses here.
IU outlined ways in which students can download files without sharing them on this website. This move comes after three IU students were sued by record companies in September for sharing music files.
Students will, of course, continue to download music files — you can’t stop that — but at least now they can do something to protect themselves that is endorsed by their university.
This topic has been causing a stir across the Internet over the past week or so. While record labels have been reluctant to condone filesharing in any form, some analysts have argued that filesharing actually increases CD sales. What stance would record labels then take if such a claim could be proved outright?
Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to say for sure either way. Whatever happens, the filesharing debate will never die as there will always be those who are either strongly against it or strongly in favor of it. We like to think we’re the latter.
An Oberholzer-Strumpf study points to filesharing increasing CD sales. Most recently, Birgitte Andersen and Marion Frenz of Birkbeck College in London released the findings of a study.
Our analysis of the Canadian P2P file-sharing subpopulation suggests that there is a strong positive relationship between P2P file-sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file-sharing increases CD purchasing.
This is far from proof, however, as the study also points out that the pair were “unable to discover any direct relationship between P2P file-sharing and CD purchases in Canada”, as Jack Schofield pointed out.
We think that filesharing doesn’t harm CD sales because it gives music fans access to unlimited resources. You can listen to any song you like. Music fans are exposed to increased amounts of music, which then encourages them to go out and buy CDs.
However, one statistic against this is that CD sales have dropped and the number of music downloads has increased. Sales of digital downloads are set to increase 50% this year. Just recently in Great Britain, a record-breaking 1.7 million singles downloads were bought in a week. People are still buying music.
Perhaps the argument should ask the question: does filesharing increase music sales, rather than CD sales?
With the online music industry booming, filesharing has its place. What’s your stance? Do you think filesharing increases CD sales or is it a load of rubbish?
Well it’s been a long time coming, but we put the monkeys to work to rectify the comments situation here. As you all know, up until now, you had to be a registered member to post comments. Well, we’re changing things up a bit because we want to hear what you think. After all, this entire website is here for you, so we want to hear your opinions on the articles we write and the latest news and views.
If you’ve got a scoop, let us know about it, leave us a comment. If we get it wrong, tell us! If you like what we say, then let us know why. From now on, anybody can leave a comment on the blog, so we’re looking for some healthy discussion from you guys.
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Canadian Police this week used some common sense and announced that they will cease singling out people who download copyright material. Canadians who use P2P filesharing software, torrents or other means of obtaining copyright songs, movies or images for personal use won’t have to worry about being arrested.
Canadian police have said that they will concentrate their efforts on organized crime and copyright crimes that directly affect consumers.
Admitting to the impossible task of keeping tabs on who is using P2P filesharing software to obtain copyright material, the Canadian police have also said that they would rather concentrate their efforts on going after real criminals, instead hunting down music fans.
“[Piracy] It is too easy to copy these days and we do not know how to stop it,” said Noel St-Hilaire, head of copyright theft investigations of the Canadian police.
Don’t get too comfortable if you’re in Canada, because you might just end up like Hew Griffiths, the Australian man who is serving a 15-month prison sentence in the US after being convicted of software piracy — despite having never been to the US before he was tried.
Will US record labels start targeting people like they have been doing to America’s students?
At least the Canadians are seeing sense.
What does everyone think? Will the rest of the world lighten up when it comes to filesharing?
While the music industry is busy suing students for making music available through P2P filesharing software and torrents, students at the Friends University, Wichita KS, aren’t being given the choice.
Students are some of the most prolific users of filesharing software for a reason; most of the time they’re flat broke. The Friends University, however, has implemented a policy banning the use of all P2P filesharing software, such as Limewire and Ares.
“We’re taking action from within to protect our students,” said Brian Bollinger of the Residence Life office at Friends University.
The university is running a three-strikes-and-your-out policy and has been monitoring all students online activities.
“Now I just buy stuff on iTunes, even though I don’t like paying a dollar for a song,” said one student. “I really don’t like paying, but I really don’t want to go to jail.”
This is the sad state of the music industry today. Watch your backs.