RIAA Drops P2P Lawsuit Strategy, Goes Local

An anonymous reader writes "Wondering why the RIAA hasn't announced 800 lawsuits per month any more? Well, they're still suing people, but have developed a new strategy according to Slyck.com. Instead the RIAA is looking to be more localized, focused and personal with its new strategy." As another reader puts it, the RIAA "will opt to file lawsuits on a weekly basis and work with local media to give it a more geographically relevant feel." Perhaps they'll also pick their targets a bit more carefully.

Fantastic

[l5rfanboy (977086)]

So instead of one rediculous article a month we're going to get ten a week of equally little value?

Great.

Huh?

[Cleon (471197)]

"more localized, focused and personal?"

What, are we talking warm, fuzzy, happy, huggie-time lawsuits from your friendly neighborhood big-brother cartel?

Re:Huh?

[DrSkwid (118965)]

> Do most people feel that stealing from Walmart is wrong, since they are a huge mega-corp?

Most people feel stealing is wrong, how could they not.

I enjoy stealing, but I'd be hard pushed to convince anyone I was doing the right thing.

Re:Huh?

[by Anonymous Coward]

The problem is the definition of stealing. Traditionally, stealing always meant intentionally and permanently depriving someone of their property. This was later extended to cover situations where you deprive someone of a service, or where you don't permanently deprive someone of property but you deprive them of it for long enough to render it useless (i.e. taking someone's concert ticket and giving it back after the concert has gone ahead).

In no sense of the word can it be said that anyone here is being deprived of anything. A digital copy leaves the original completely intact. Of course, **AA argue that every single copy equals a lost sale. They would, wouldn't they? But this is blatantly ridiculous. There are far too many people who hoard music/movies - they couldn't have afforded to buy them all even if they wanted to. The truth is that a very tiny portion of those people who download would have bought the item if they hadn't downloaded (and a number of those people buy the item anyway, after they've tried it).

Downloading is just a convenience to most people. It's easier for me to download an album/movie and spend an hour listening to/watching it than it is for me to research what's worth buying. If I like it enough that I'll get more mileage out of it than the initial look, I'll buy it anyway. If there were no downloads I wouldn't buy any crap that came out, I'd do lots of research to see which were worth my limited fiscal resources. I'd waste a lot of my free time in doing so, but meh, I'd be more happy burning through time than I would money.

The real criminals are those who sell pirated items. Their customers have proven that they would be willing to buy (at the right price) the content and as such it's easier to make a case for a lost sale. Not all of them would be lost sales of course, most people would rather pay £5 for a movie AND see it at the same time as it's released in the cinema than wait 6-12 months and pay £20. But they are at least demonstrating that they're willing to pay some amount for that copy - thus the guy selling it is depriving the copyright holder of a sale, arguably stealing in the process.

Do we see the **AA/governments/police stamping out these resellers? Well, to a tiny extent. But for the most part they're going after casual downloaders. Why is this, if the real "thieves" are getting away with it? Because the real argument isn't about theft, it never was. It's about control. **AA want it and the internet has done a pretty good job of eroding it. So they attack downloaders, try to make us fear the tool that will remove their control, push for laws to control how we use content we've paid for. In essence they're trying to limit our rights in regards to our own legally purchased content - to me THEY are the real thieves in all of this. Just ask the artists, who also get royally screwed...

Re:Huh?

[Curunir_wolf (588405)]

In essence they're trying to limit our rights in regards to our own legally purchased content - to me THEY are the real thieves in all of this. Just ask the artists, who also get royally screwed...

Yes, very insightful. You've come very close to the real issue, here. See, when CDs came out (never mind the promises about the prices coming down - they never did), everybody started re-buying albums that they already had to get the CD version. (How many copies has "Dark Side of the Moon" sold again?) So many people paid for the same music twice.

The next format was the DVD-Audio, but that never really caught on. So the next market was the iPod and on-line music. Well, guess what? I can just rip my CD's to populate my iPod. "NOOOOO! We can't allow that!" Too late now, the genie is out of the bottle. But that doesn't stop the greed.

1. Control everything.
2. All downloaded music must be paid for.
3. No more ripping CDs (how many now come without copy protection?)
4. Profit forever!!!

Translation

[Turn-X Alphonse (789240)]

Translation : In national press we're getting made to look like the bad guys, so we're going to keep doing it but focus our attacks. So instead of it being in the big news papers it'll only make the local ones and we'll look like better guys instead of villians.

We see this in the UK when police raid places, it's ignored on the major news channels but local ones make if their main feature.

Either way it's the same shit, different day news wise.

Re:Translation

[gid13 (620803)]

Good points. They bring up a couple big questions for me:

1. How does the RIAA control the media so well? Are the big papers and news channels really lazy enough to only report things that have press releases?
2. For a group of companies that makes their money by essentially making idiots look cool, why are they so incapable of making non-piracy cool?

Re:Translation

[owlnation (858981)]

1. How does the RIAA control the media so well? Are the big papers and news channels really lazy enough to only report things that have press releases?

Possibly because the RIAA has direct and indirect connections to the media.

The MPAA most certainly does. For example: 20th Century Fox is part of http://www.newscorp.com/operations/other.html [newscorp.com] which owns the NY Post, The Sun and the Times in the UK, and many many many more news outlets all over the world. There is not a snowball's chance in Hell of getting negative publicity over any MPAA action in a News Corp media business.

And so on with Time Warner and the rest...

While they are not the RIAA per se - there are connections between all these players, and a joint vested interest.

Re:Translation

[SatanicPuppy (611928)]

Speaking as someone who's married to a reporter, and who works at a "local" news outlet, the publicity can only be worse from trying to localize their lawsuits. The media outlets will pick it up, and talk to the person, who'll act bewildered and put upon, and then talk to their neighbors who'll be indignant and offended, and then wrap up with a public official saying "Well, it's a law, but we don't really hold with big national corporations poking their noses into our business, and really they're pencil dicks anyway."

That's the thing with national news...They talk to national people. Some Senator or Representative who really needs RIAA money for his next election. But local news, you're talking to elected officials who probably won their office by a few thousand votes at best, about people who live right down the street. Make it local, you make it personal, and people will take it personally.

Re:Translation

[Optikschmoptik (971793)]

The advantage of this, especially in the U.S., is that it is so much easier to manipulate local news. Most network local stations have distilled their newscasts down to 1. Weather, 2. Sports, 3. What you should be scared of, and 3a. What local shame is deserved, 3b. Missing or potentially missing children.

Now in national media, the RIAA vs. Everyone Else fight is probably a draw; or at least they're not seeing a lot of potential in pushing their agenda on the national stage. However, it's so much easier to be the only source for a shoestring local news station and make sure that they report your story from exactly your spin angle. Ask Karen Ryan about that.

RIAA can make sure that their local raids, local lawsuits etc. are reported in category 3a along the lines of "The dangers of filesharing in the tri-county area" or "Is your neighbor a dangerous media pirate?" And they'll show some poor hapless dropout sputtering to defend himself. He'll get one soundbite that makes him sound like a rube or thug. The local RIAA rep, (polished, well-dressed and trained), will politely yet sternly rattle off some talking points (probably trying to sound like a DA), and the report will wrap up with a conclusion that justice has been served. Think the EFF will be able to keep up in that realm? I doubt anyone could develop the rapid response needed to get a rebuttal into local news cycles, nationally distributed.

We love to complain about the terrible quality of the major nationwide news networks, but the local stuff is just horrific. It's diabolically clever for them to use it to their advantage.

But, I thought that

[ematic (217513)]

piracy had been contained [slashdot.org]!? Is the RIAA talking out of both side of its mouth again. Or, does one hand of the RIAA not know what the other is doing? Hmm.

RIAA: A boycott that works

[teamhasnoi (554944)]

Ha. This is a repost, but I thought it good enough to give another chance - I really think someone should run with it.

Boycotting the RIAA will only result in more cries of, "Pirates! Pirates!". I think a different boycott is in order.

On the RIAA page, there is a list of labels that associate themselves with the RIAA - remember, the RIAA is a group of labels, and other music related 'entities' that like the lobbying power that the RIAA gives them.

Not buying CDs, videos or DRMd files is not going to hurt the RIAA - they make their money from 'dues' from the individual labels. Not buying CDs will only help the RIAA make a case that it's due to piracy, and make that case to those who make the laws.

However, if a boycott was organized that picked, let's say five, (smaller) labels from that list, and let them know that no CDs from them will be purchased that month or year by the organized boycott, calls of piracy hurting sales could be refuted on that smaller scale,(Not that they can't be refuted now...)

Labels who think that calling their customers thieves, handing out lawsuits, restricting fair use, and lobbying for the demise of independent music is ok will get a message that their customers will not stand for it.

Issues with this:

In order to work this boycott has to be big, organized, and educated. Big, so the set of music the particular few labels include intersect with the boycotting group. The boycott doesn't work if no one was going to buy that music anyway. Those sales 'lost' to apathy will be blamed on piracy, and used to lobby for more restrictions and copyrightholder power.

Oraganized, so that the chosen labels (picked by size and choice of music: see above) get an actual message : "You are being boycotted by x number of people who have agreed that they will not buy your labels offerings until: (insert ultimatum here - hell freezes over, a year passes, or my favorite, disassociation with the RIAA) This notice should be sent anywhere that would reproduce it, and those not 'signed up' should be ...

Educated, so that they know what the RIAA is (not a company per se, but a collection of companies), why the boycott is happening, and how they can help.

There are certainly other things to take into account, such as the 'list' is by design, not accurate. There have been cases where the RIAA has claimed membership by some small (and suddenly successful) lables, in order to present a 'united front' and spread the message that RIAA=success/no RIAA=obscurity.

I'm convinced that the only way to kill the RIAA is to go after the legs - small and medium labels that support it. Once these smaller labels have severed their connection with the RIAA, the RIAA will have less money to lobby for DRM and the extention of copyrights, less money to pay lawyers to sue your dead grandma, less money to push their skewed facts, figures and arguments to an uneducated public.

Remember, the RIAA's money comes from labels and manufacturing, whose money comes from you. Small, focused strikes by a large educated group are the only way to win.

Re:RIAA: A boycott that works

[denis-The-menace (471988)]

Nice try but it won't work.
Right now teens are the #1 buyers of music.
There are very few teens who would give up buying a popular song in protest of something.

The real solution is to convince Small/Medium labels to either leave the RIAA or not join the RIAA in the first place.
Convincing the Small/Medium labels without the help of their #1 customers is the hard part.
You'd have to make it un-cool to buy from the RIAA.
You'd have to make it as un-cool as drunk driving and give them options on how to buy the music differently.

Imagine a video ad showing a teen in a music store thinking about where the money goes, how it funds corruption in our government (DRM, DMCA), how it makes the police kick down your door if they *think* you pirated the music, How it pays for lawyers to sue grandmas, and how little the artist actually makes from the sale. Then show the teen walking out the door without buying it. Then show the teen getting the music differently.

Getting the music differently is part I haven't figured out, yet.
Can they buy the music directly from the artist's web site?
Does the artist get more $ if you buy the music at their concert?
I dunno

Translation:

[Spy der Mann (805235)]

They turned off their automatic lawsuit generator.

Wild Guess...

[should_be_linear (779431)]

Wondering why the RIAA hasn't announced 800 lawsuits per month any more?

World Cup?

More of the same

[Billosaur (927319)]

The problem with the current barrage of lawsuits is equivalent to being hit with a fire hose of information. With so many individuals being hit at once, it becomes counterproductive to the entertainment industry's effort to educate the file-sharing populace. The growing perception over the years has developed into complacency. Who are these people? Do they live near me? Why should I care if some nameless, faceless individual on the other side of the continent was sued for sharing 5,000 songs on the FastTrack network?

This lack of focus is apparent when alleged file-sharing pirates come forward to the media and plead ignorance in the face of a $3,000.00 settlement. Often times such individuals are completely befuddled, unaware their actions were unlawful.

Or the RIAA/MPAA are so befuddled that they sue people who aren't guilty of much of anything. If they think this is somehow going to put a better face on their draconian tactics then they are even more egotistical and deluded than I had previously realized. If nothing else, it will rally local P2P groups and rouse them into action, and the local publicity the RIAA/MPAA is seeking will not be as friendly as they imagine. In fact, i see this backfiring on them in the long run, as the average customer begins to wonder why they are paying so much for this content.

Brilliant!

[fobbman (131816)]

You know, at first I thought that the attorneys who work for the RIAA were blood-sucking leeches for going after all of those people like they do. However, the more I think about it the more I think that they truly are brilliant. They have tapped into a seemingly endless supply of cash at the RIAA by trying to accomplish something that will never work: shutting down file sharing entirely.

If they ARE blood-sucking leeches, they are very smart blood sucking leeches. Bravo!

Insurance?

[BigNumber (457893)]

I guess I won't be needing that Swedish piracy insurance now.

They are the dumbest people alive.

[SpecTheIntro (951219)]

The lawsuits are and will continue to be an essential part of a larger effort to encourage fans to enjoy music legally.

Yes, the threat of legislation and consistent bullying tactics are a surefire way to get me to "enjoy" my music legally. Basically all they want to do is make it look like they are catching people every day (and I'm sure they are) and then publicize that in local papers. I don't care if Robert Vaughn in Washington D.C. gets caught for file-sharing, but if Jimmy across the street gets a fine, well then I'd better be scared.

I wonder if the RIAA has done any public image surveys since they decided to start terrorizing their consumers? It's one thing to try to protect your intellectual property; it's another thing entirely to shake down every person with an internet connection. I can't think of one person nowadays who thinks the record industry is anything but a pack of devils; I just wish there was some way of translating that revulsion into serious market reform. They're just jackals, plain and simple.

Re:They are the dumbest people alive.

[ObligatoryUserName (126027)]

The dumbest people alive? Hardly.

The RIAA is working great. It's a great big magnet for all the ill-will generated as the labels fight to control how music is distributed. Everyone hates them, but no one hates the member labels - the abstract acronym organization that sells nothing takes all the blame. Perfect.

Why would the RIAA care what their public image is? They want you to like Shakira (her hips don't lie, you know) - they don't give a flip what you think about the organization.

Choose RIAA

[Bromskloss (750445)]

..for a more localized, focused and personal experience.

That's the BSA model

[MoNickels (1700)]

So they're adopting the Business Software Alliance model, right? Will they adopt it fully? Will they allow for retroactive purchase and penalties to be paid in an extralegal manner rather than pursuing the manner in courts?

If I served on a jury for this.....

[dfenstrate (202098)]

I would, if properly convinced the defendant was guilty, fine him thus:

$3 for every song on his computer ($1 Itunes price, $2 punitive), minus $36 for every physical CD he owned ($3 a song, figure an average of 12 songs a CD).

It's enough to make the kid feel pain for violating the law, without being absurd. While a $20,000 judgement against you would suck, it's not unpayable.

Of course, a $20k judgement may not make such a law suit a net financial loss for the RIAA, but they can cry me and the rest of the Jury a river.

Also remember that the Jury is the ultimate arbriter of both the defendant and the law- even if the law says he's to be fined $1000 per song or such nonsense, a jury does not have to follow that in setting an award.

IANAL but you can read about Jury Nullification [wikipedia.org] yourself.

Re:Oh goodie

[MrSquirrel (976630)]

I guess you are either flamebaiting or you must work for the RIAA -- anyone who pays attention to the world knows that the RIAA is a pile of garbage. Just look into some of the crap that they've done (hint: the article summary had 3 cases where the RIAA was playing the role of a tool).
Going after 12 year olds for "violating" intellectual property rights is bullshit -- when was the last time you asked a 12 year old about intellectual property rights and got any answer other than a headscratch and a "huh?".
Telling a 15 year old she has to lie in court otherwise she will be tried for perjury is not only unethical but brutal. If you're religious, placing your hand on the bible and swearing to go that you're telling the truth and then having to lie because the RIAA told you to is "just protecting intellectual copyright"?
Suing a woman who has never used a computer in her life... doesn't that just scream "I'm the RIAA and I don't look into things before I try to ruin peoples' lives by suing them into the poorhouse"?

They're NOT protecting the artists that they suppossedly represent (via the record companies that they represent):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riaa [wikipedia.org]
"In 1999, Stanley M. Glazier, a Congressional staff attorney, inserted, without public notice or comment, substantive language into the final markup of a "technical corrections" section of copyright legislation, classifying many music recordings as "works made for hire," thereby stripping artists of their copyright interests and transferring those interests to their record labels. Shortly afterwards, Glazier was hired as Senior Vice President of Government Relations and Legislative Counsel for the RIAA, which vigorously defended the change when it came to light. The battle over the disputed provision led to the formation of the Recording Artists' Coalition, which successfully lobbied for repeal of the change."

"In 2006, the RIAA claimed that ripping CDs and backing them up does not constitute fair use, because tracks from ripped CDs do not maintain the controversial DRM to protect the music file from copyright infringement. They argue that, there is no evidence that any of the relevant media are "unusually subject to damage" and that "even if CDs do become damaged, replacements are readily available at affordable prices.""
That's right, they want you to buy a new CD when yours breaks... after all, they're "unusually subject to damage", right? Those thing pieces of plastic scratch more easily than my ass! Ripping the CD to my computer (and not sharing it) is not fair use? They don't want me putting it on my mp3 player so I can take my 800+ CD collection wherever I want without hiring a personal music assistant? Damn, well I guess I could employ one of the people the RIAA sued into the ground for pretty cheap. By the way, about 20 of those cds no longer work due to scratches, thankfully I have all my music ripped to my computer so I was able to burn myself a backed up copy -- I store all my cds in the cases they come in or in proteced and padded cd booklets so it's not like I'm mishandling them.
The RIAA is not in the interest of protecting rights of the artist or the consumer -- they're in the interest of making themselves rich and powerful.

Re:Oh goodie

[yeremein (678037)]

In 2006, the RIAA claimed that ripping CDs and backing them up does not constitute fair use, because tracks from ripped CDs do not maintain the controversial DRM to protect the music file from copyright infringement. They argue that, there is no evidence that any of the relevant media are "unusually subject to damage" and that "even if CDs do become damaged, replacements are readily available at affordable prices."

Hmm. I've always suspsected that the goal of DRM is to make you pay for the same thing over and over. This confirms my suspicion.

Interestingly enough, this [riaa.com] is still on the RIAA's website:

If you choose to take your own CDs and make copies for yourself on your computer or portable music player, that's great. It's your music and we want you to enjoy it at home, at work, in the car and on the jogging trail.