p2pnet - rss feed: RIAA boosts attacks on US schools
p2pnet.net news:- “It’s something we feel we have to do,” RIAA president Carey Sherman is quoted as saying.
What? Stop trying to sue men, women and children into buying his employers’ low-quality, over-priced ‘product’?
To the contrary, “Cracking down on college students, the music industry is sending thousands more complaints to top universities this school year than it did last year as it targets music illegally downloaded over campus computer networks,” says Associated Press, going on:
“A few schools, including Ohio and Purdue universities, already have received more than 1,000 complaints accusing individual students since last fall - significant increases over the past school year. For students who are caught, punishments vary from e-mail warnings to semester-long suspensions from classes.”
Not that RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) owners Warner Music (US), EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France) and Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) owners are achieving much, beyond having a seriously deleterious effect on studies and school routines.
BigChampagne is the premier p2p research company and, “We have observed no decreases in file sharing activity,” its ceo, Eric Garland, told p2pnet, continuing:
“On the contrary, the aggressive growth in popularity of BitTorrent clients (and increases in gnutella users by way of Limewire et al) demonstrate very much the opposite.
“While proportionally the growth rate in file sharing of film and television (and other multimedia) now exceeds that of popular music, we have observed no net decline in music, and music remains the most popular entertainment on P2P networks.”
How many people are plugged into the networks?
“There are nearly ten million people using only the most popular networks at any given time (to say nothing of private, invitation only, small group sharing etc.) and there are - very conservatively speaking - more than a billion files a month,” says Garland, adding:
“The IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry) and RIAA project the volume of downloads to be far greater than that (estimates approaching 3 billion/month), but we don’t know the basis of these projections.”
Under US federal law, “universities that receive complaints about students illegally distributing copyrighted songs generally must act to stop repeat offenders or else the schools can be sued,” says AP. “The entertainment industry typically can identify a student only by his or her numerical Internet address and must rely on the school to correlate that information to trace a person’s real-world identity.”
The RIAA claims its bizarre sue ‘em all terror campaign is driving music lovers away from the p2p file sharing networks and independent sites and services.
Having failed, dismally, to establish any kind of meaningful corporate download presence, the Big 4 are trying to gain control of who distributes music online, and by what means. They disingenuously claim their war against their own customers is having an effect.
But as the Big Champagne findings show, the reverse is true.
Also See:
Associated Press - Music companies target colleges in latest downloading crackdown, January 21, 2007
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
February 22nd, 2007 at 3:13 pm
The RIAA’s bizarre sue ‘em all terror campaign is driving music lovers away from it’s own clients, the “big four” record labels. That they can’t seem to see or accept that would be funny if the lawsuits were not so damaging to ordinary people’s lives.