The RIAA's Rocky Road Ahead

The RIAA's new plan to enlist ISPs in its war on file sharing, once it announced it was calling a halt to new consumer lawsuits, is running into rough sledding. Wired reports on the continuing legal murkiness of the RIAA's interpretation of copyright law. And one small ISP in Louisiana asks the recording organization, "You want me to police your intellectual property? What's your billing address?"

Multiple interpretations

"What's your billing address?"

That's not exactly an unequivocal rejection.

Where would all you music sharers be if the RIAA responds with a valid billing address? It is just a matter of money before those ISPs start cooperating.

Re:Multiple interpretations

It's worse than that; it's a new justification for the RIAA to ask for money.

RIAA: "Pirates are generating losses of millions of dollars. They force us to pay large amounts to every ISP so they enforce our demands."

"Now when we catch a pirate we'll of course ask for compensation of all those millions."

Soon sending a song through the web will bring larger fines than experimenting with nuclear weapons at home.

I can see the prison conversations.
"What are you here for?"
"Eating babies. And you?"
"Whistling a song in public."
"Friking depraved garbage! I hope you rot in hell."

Re:Multiple interpretations

Soon sending a song through the web will bring larger fines than experimenting with nuclear weapons at home.

The fines are already at the level where it doesn't matter. The median household income in the US is about 50k$, and at 150k$/song you're being sued for your life earnings for sharing a CD with 15 songs. If you're sharing your music collection with your friends, say 200 CDs * 15 songs then even at a 750$ statutory minimum you're also looking at the same. It's the point where it just doesn't matter - if I owed 2 milion dollars or 200 million dollars or 200 trillion dollars it wouldn't matter. It's a "life" sentence for sharing music files...

Re:Multiple interpretations

As a legal user of P2P, and as a PC gamer (linux only, though), I really hate all the copyright infringements going on.

If copyright law were a more reasonable reflection of reality, there wouldn't be anywhere near as much copyright infringement going on.

I'd bet that the reason we don't see another monkey island or similar is due to piracy.

And you'd be wrong.

Re:Multiple interpretations

Piracy was already rampant when monkey island came out. It came on floppies which were easily copied.
But the fact is, making good playable games is less profitable than making lousy games with pretty graphics.

Re:Multiple interpretations

I'd bet that the reason we don't see another monkey island or similar is due to piracy.

That is not true. Adventure games, like Monkey Island, have been deemed not popular/profitable enough to make. The big publishers only want to turn out shooters, war sims, and the occasional fantasy/RPG title. It isn't just adventure games either...when is the last time you saw a decent flight sim? Or, more specifically my personal favorite - space flight sims.

Piracy is being used as a digital bogeyman to explain anything and everything that publishers dislike.

Music/Game sales slipping? Must be piracy, there's no way people don't like what we're selling or how we're selling it. Find new talent? Embrace on-line distribution? Why do that when we can just prosecute?!

Producing games is expensive. Nobody wants to just break-even these days, they all want the next ginormous hit. So everyone is trying to copy the leader... That's why you get eleventy-billion Halo clones and GTA-alikes. MMORPGs, similarly, were seen as a cash cow. For a while there we had new MMORPGs being announced weekly.

My hope is that someday it will be feasible to simply host the game on some server and deliver all the content over the net

It already is [steampowered.com], and in such a way that it's actually a boon to both the producers and the players.

Steam is good for producers because you've got centralized tracking of game registration/authorization. And people are hesitant to mess around too much with a game on Steam because it can get their entire Steam Account (and all their Steam games) banned. Sure, it can be cracked/bypassed... But it works at least as well as SecuROM does, and it's less invasive to the player. Plus you can distribute your game digitally, so you save on packaging.

Steam is good for players because all you need is your username and password to re-install anything you've ever purchased on Steam. Lose the CD? No problem! Reformat your entire computer? No problem! Just log in to Steam, kick off the download, and wait. You also get all your game updates distributed automatically, built-in profile/achievement/friends/community support, and a very simple and easy-to-use on-line store.

But distribution methods like Steam don't fix the problem. It doesn't matter how you distribute your games/music or how you protect them - if people don't feel that they're worth the price you're asking, they won't buy.

Some people are going to pirate no matter what. There's no way they'll ever pay a cent. It might be the thrill of doing something "illegal"... It might be some kind of weird political statement... But they're just never going to pay.

But then you also have folks who are just unwilling to pay $60 for yet-another-scifi-shooter that is a crappy imitation of Halo with only 5 hours of gameplay. They may be willing to pirate a copy of it just to see what everyone is talking about. They may be bored enough to play around with it for a few hours. But they aren't willing to shell out $60 for a piece of crap.

You aren't the only person who likes adventure games. If EA was willing to put the time and resources into turning out a decent adventure title it would sell. But you (and the other adventure fans out there) can't buy what they aren't making.

Similarly I would buy a decent space flight sim, if they'd make it.

Hopefully recent titles like Dead Space and Mirror's Edge mean that EA is finally willing to try something new... But I'll believe it when I see more than one or two interesting titles.

Re:Multiple interpretations

Oh, contrair

Here here, it's a doggy-dog world.

Re:Multiple interpretations

Of course this is how the statement should be interpreted. It does, however, indicate that the ISP in question might be pretty realistic about the reality of the RIAA interpretation of copyright law: that it is not tenable in the long run and that everyone cannot simply be expected to jump on board. While it is not an unequivocal "no," it does indicate a reluctance to simply comply: though, that reluctance might indeed be assuaged by a little cash (probably a lot of cash.

Maybe the ISP's will charge RIAA so exorbitantly that they it will be a deterrent to their seeking compliance in the first place.

Re:Multiple interpretations

"It is just a matter of money before those ISPs start cooperating."

From the article;

"First, when a media company demands he kick a customer off the network, there is very little in the way of proof offered that the person in question has committed a crime, according to Scroggin. Yet, entertainment companies want Scroggin to simply wave goodbye to a customer who might have signed up for a three-year plan. At $40 per month, that customer is potentially worth $1,440 to Scroggin over the life of the plan. That, says the ISP owner, is unreasonable.
Next, it's expensive and time consuming to ask highly paid technicians to chase down IP logs and customer IDs, Scroggin said, noting that it's especially difficult nowadays because it's extremely easy to spoof IP addresses.
And then there are the letters Scroggin receives from Hollywood that demand he act or else.
Scroggin warns that the film and music industries must try a new tack if they want cooperation from ISPs."

It seems it's not just a matter of money, it's a question of proof, technical feasability, willingness on the part of the ISP's and quite a lot of money.

Re:Multiple interpretations

You can forge IP packets so that the reciever of the packet is given a fake sender IP. Im not entirely sure how the packets of most P2P programs work, but it could be possible they will accept a packet with a spoofed IP under the correct circumstances. In this way you could possibly make it look like 76.74.24.143 was distributing music (riaa.com).

Re:Multiple interpretations

From the background article of the same source: "In regards to billing, we fail to understand what you mean with that!" Apparently, that question is far too complex and foreign a question for these money-hungry scum to comprehend.

Legal?

What is the legality of this? RIAA tells them that they represent Metallica and I have a rar file called metalica. This would mean that the provider opens my rar file and looks into it. They should not be allowed to do so. Privacy and such, you know.

In Belgium what happens is that a letter is send to the provider that user X with IP Y at time Z was downloading a file that they believe to contain copyrighted material. The provider then could do several things. Basicaly 1) forward the letter or 2) ignore it.

No information could go to the local RIAA. This is called privacy. So the only thing they could do was try to sue. However the courts said that they would not follow up unless people where making money out of it.

So copying songs and selling them: burn in hell.
Downloading them and sharing with friends or strangers: nothing happens.

The fact that I have 60 petabyte of songs downloaded does not mean they lost money. I stopped buying long before the internet made it possible to download. I shared music with friends on casette. Hey, that is a good casette, can you make me a copy? How did you get it?
Well, I got copies from friends and using my dual-cassette player copied the different numbers so I had my own music, minus the crap.

When I think since when this has been going on, I am getting old.

Re:Legal?

I have 60 petabyte of songs downloaded

Is there that much recorded music in the world?

Re:Legal?

I have 60 petabyte of songs downloaded

Is there that much recorded music in the world?

Maybe not by itself, but if you added rap and pop there might be...

But...

why does the RIAA have to pay this ISP? Part of the value that the ISP provides to customers is the ability to pirate music. Therefore, the ISP should be paying for this.

And the ISP should send the RIAA a pony.

And a cute little puppy.

Whups, sorry about that. I channeled the RIAA there for a second.

Re:But...

Hey! This screams for a car analogy ;)

1. Part of the value that the car manufacturers provide to customers is the ability to use the road. So car manufacturers should be paying for roadbuilding :)
2. Part of the value that light bulb manufacturers provide to customers is the ability to travel at night with your car, so the light bulb manufacturers should be paying for car building.
3. Part of the value that roadbuilding provides to the road users is the ability to get away from a crime scene very fast, so road builders should sponsor the local police.

Any more ideas? :)

Viable business model?

I can't believe sueing people like the RIAA does is a viable business model. The costs must outweigh the benefits by far. Even if the RIAA manages to win a case against a poor grandmother who has never heard of P2P and the like, she won't be able to pay the fine because the costs of defending herself have bankrupted her for good. I have a very hard time understanding the people who work for the RIAA and sue people for a living.

Forget sueing grandma . . .

. . . it looks to me like they are ramping up to sue ISPs. They are probably lobbying right now to get laws requiring ISP enforcement.

There is more money to squeeze out of them, compared to grandma.

Viable business model? More like a dieing business model. I would prefer to see a music industry in the future, that is comprised of artists and consumers, where the artists are payed fair prices for their work.

And no big record labels.

Re:Viable business model?

I can't believe sueing people like the RIAA does is a viable business model. The costs must outweigh the benefits by far. Even if the RIAA manages to win a case against a poor grandmother who has never heard of P2P and the like, she won't be able to pay the fine because the costs of defending herself have bankrupted her for good.

It's a terror campaign. The idea is to intimidate the public so that they're afraid to pirate. It doesn't matter if they lose money suing one victim, if a thousand others are thereby frightened away from piracy.

Re:Viable business model?

>>>It's a terror campaign

And what do we do with terrorists? Shoot 'em.

Re:Viable business model?

I can't believe sueing people like the RIAA does is a viable business model. The costs must outweigh the benefits by far. Even if the RIAA manages to win a case against a poor grandmother who has never heard of P2P and the like, she won't be able to pay the fine because the costs of defending herself have bankrupted her for good. I have a very hard time understanding the people who work for the RIAA and sue people for a living.

It isn't. Suing people is not the RIAA's business model.

They're used to making money by being the gatekeepers of music. Traditionally, if you wanted to be a musician, it was expensive to get your music heard. You had to get it recorded onto a record/tape/CD... Get it packaged and distributed to retailers... Get it played on the radio... Get tours booked... This is what the RIAA did. They discovered people, provided the means for them to distribute their music, and profited from the whole thing.

These days it is easy to distribute music. Anyone with a microphone and a MySpace page can make their music available to anyone and everyone who wants to hear it. You can easily collect payments directly through something like PayPal. You can even use Cafe Press to turn out promotional materials yourself. The RIAA, in short, is no longer needed.

These lawsuits aren't intended to make money, they're intended to scare people. The RIAA wants to convince people that on-line distribution in general is bad. They want people to be terrified of downloading anything, regardless of where it comes from. Then they can go back to selling CD's and being the gatekeepers that they used to be.

Re:Viable business model?

All those members are commercial companies. They will eventually stop funding the RIAA because the RIAA wastes their money on futile attempts to eradicate illegal copying.

They wont win

This whole story bores the crap out of me... It's been going on pretty much since the mp3 was invented. I remember it being an issue back when the original mp3.com was founded in the 90's. The RIAA cant ever stop people recording or distributing sound. Maybe they have some influence in the US, but there are billions of people on the web who don't live in the US and will continue to copy and share music/videos. I've heard that there are chinese p2p programs like ppstream that allow you to watch hundresds of recent movies on demand and there's nothing the Americans can do about it.

Not perfect, but

The RIAA's new strategy isn't perfect, but it's a helluva lot better than trying to sue their customers into lifelong financial ruin.

When it comes right down to it, you're not supposed to share their music, and the content industry is well within their rights to tell you to stop if they see you doing it. And if ISPs agree to block you for repeat offenses, then you're pretty much out of luck if you don't heed those warnings.

There are two things still shady about this plan, though, and both have to do with reducing the RIAA's liability. One has to do with MediaSentry not being licensed as a private investigator. It's possible that the new plan will prevent them from having to get a license in each state where they operate or investigate. Most likely, MediaSentry will never get taken to task for their alleged illegal actions in most states, even though their activities won't change.

And two, the RIAA lawsuits have had a lot of missed targets, each carrying the possibility of backfiring in a big way. The RIAA reduces this liability once they're sending nastygrams to ISPs instead. Under the new plan, they can pretty much send letters complaining about Intartubes users at random, and they never have to worry about countersuits or heinously large legal expenses. Of course, this also means that there's little avenue for protest - if your ISP cuts you off, how are you going to convince them of your innocence (aside from paying a jacked-up reconnection fee, of course)?

Re:Not perfect, but

Not to be overly optimistic, but I would guess that if/when they put this plan into action and start disconnecting innocent people, the ISPs will be the ones to start getting taken to court. I have a sneaking suspicion that if (hopefully before) that happens, ISPs will be very reluctant to go along with their plans.