The Debate Over RIAA Lawsuits Misses The Point
Ed Felten's got a post where he tries to clarify the debate over the EFF's recent report on the state of the RIAA suing individuals for file sharing.
Ed, along with others, are trying to make a point that it's not proper to criticize the RIAA for bringing these suits without offering some alternative techniques for taking action to prevent widespread copyright violations on the Internet.
People who don’t like the RIAA’s litigous agenda need to come up with a workable alternative. Too many people on the anti-RIAA side like to criticize every attempt to enforce current copyright laws without suggesting alternative enforcement mechanisms, and without proposing an alternative legal regime. I’m not comfortable with simply shrugging at wide-spread piracy and telling the RIAA to lower their prices and stop whining.
I think that to some extent this approach ignores a couple of important points.
The first is that the law (in this case the DMCA) gives copyright holders a complete methodology for how to stop individuals they find who are engaging in illegal sharing of files through the "take down" provisions. All they have to do is complain to an ISP about specific instances of file sharing and action will be taken, no questions asked (at least if the ISP wants to be able to avail themselves of the DMCA "safe harbor" from liability). The Act also requires ISPs to terminate accounts for repeat offenders.
This set of provisions is a far more effective and less costly means of actually stopping the activity of gross infringers than lawsuits will ever be. I know the RIAA hasn't been shy about using this method with universities. I don't know to what extent they use it with commercial ISPs.
The second point I'd make is that right now the evidence is that online file sharing is probably not costing the RIAA's members much in lost sales. Take a look at yesterday's post in Chris Anderson's Long Tail blog, examining recent sales statistics in mainstream media:
Down:
* Box Office: down by 7% this year (tickets per capita have fallen every year since 2001).
* Newspapers: circulation, which peaked in 1987, is declining faster than ever and is down another 2.6% so far this year.
* Music: Sales are down another 5.7% this year; although digital downloads (still just 6% of the business) are climbing nicely.
* Radio: down 4% this year alone, continuing a multi-decade decline.
* Books: down by 7% in 2004 (but see comments below for discussion)
Mixed:
* DVDs: sales growth is slowing dramatically, from 29% last year to single digits this year.
* Magazines: Ad revenues are up a bit although the number of ad pages is flat (they're charging more per page). Circulation is also flat, while newsstand sales are at an all-time low.
* Videogames: it's the final few months of the current generation of consoles, which tends to the trough of the buying cycle. Sales were down 20% in Sept, but will probably pick up by Christmas with the launch of the Xbox 360.
Up:
* Internet advertising:
--Banners: Up 10% this year
--Keywords: Google revenues up 96%
This would seem to indicate that people are consuming less of the mainstream media, and that the drop in the level of music sales is in line with the drops in other forms of media. That suggests that some larger economic and/or cultural forces are at work here.
My feeling is that the amount of effort the RIAA is spending with these high profile legal actions is just not worth it for them, much less the trouble it causes others.
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