p2pnet - rss feed: Big Music’s climate of terror
p2pnet.net News:- Almost every day we see a report which claims the Big Five record labels are succeeding in their sue ‘em all campaign to club file sharers into buying music industry ‘product’.
Then comes another study claiming the exact opposite.
What’s one to believe? - wonders p2pnet editor Jon Newton in his TechNewsWorld column.
Now read on >>>>>>>>>
Big Music’s Climate of Terror and the Media Response
By Jon Newton - TechNewsWorld
The CRIA, Canada’s version of the RIAA, recently suffered an ignominious and embarrassing defeat when it failed to convince a Canadian federal court that online file sharing is illegal and is “devastating” the multi-billion dollar music industry.
Having fallen flat on its face, the CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association) is now trying to pull itself up by its bootlaces by claiming “a significant majority of Canadians disagreed with the recent Federal Court decision which suggested that it is not illegal to upload music files on the Internet.” [The emphasis is mine.]
However, when he ruled against the CRIA, Justice Konrad von Finckenstein didn’t ’suggest’ anything. He stated, clearly and unequivocally, that putting digital music files into a computer directory which might be shared remotely by someone else isn’t copyright infringement under Canadian law.
So considering that, unlike people in the US, Canadians can freely share music online without fear of being savaged by the Big Five record labels, the CRIA ‘finding’ is hard to fathom, even bearing in mind it comes from a study commissioned by the CRIA itself.
A newer report from Ipsos-Reid and quoted in a Canadian Press story yesterday suggests fewer Canadians are downloading than in 2000 because “according to 41 per cent of respondents surveyed online, was lawsuits launched in the U.S., which targeted those who share music files on peer-to-peer services like KaZaA”.
You’d think that would make the music industry happy but apparently, it doesn’t. “If it was actually true (that downloading decreased), then I would be very delighted today,” Graham Henderson, senior vp of business affairs for Universal Music Canada is quoted as saying.
The report also has Ipsos-Reid vp Chris Ferneyhough stating, “There are a lot of people who didn’t know if they could be sued or not, even though it was made abundantly clear that it was just Americans who were being sued.”
Stacking the Reports
The above two surveys are particularly puzzling stacked against another from America’s Pew Internet & American Life Project which says the number of people who share music through the p2p networks has actually increased from an estimated 18 million to 23 million since its November-December, 2003, survey.
It becomes even more confusing when you take into account a different Pew report that states:
“In terms of their careers, more artists say free music downloading online has helped them than hurt them. Fully 83% of those in the survey say they provide free samples or previews of their music online. And strong pluralities say free downloading has a payoff for them. For instance, 35% of them say free downloading has helped their careers and only 5% say it has hurt. Some 30% say free downloading has helped increase attendance at their concerts, 21% say it has helped them sell CDs or other merchandise; and 19% say it has helped them gain radio playing time for their music. Only fractions of them cite any negative impact of downloading on those aspects of their work.”
Just the facts …
“Our focus is on the world’s most popular ‘download’ communities, file sharing networks,” says Eric Garland’s Big Champage on its web page. “These are the download ’sites’ (actually networks) first made famous by Napster and now including clients like Limewire, Bearshare, KaZaA, Morpheus, and hundreds of others.”
And while the music industry is reporting that its *sue ‘em all* campaign is dramatically reducing the number of file sharers, and Apple is boasting people downloaded 50 million files from its iTunes online music store in its first year, Big Champagne is reporting that at a conservative estimate, four million people are online at any given moment, happily swapping one BILLION files every month, at the very least.
“We want to be the *Just the facts, ma’am* company says Garland. “It’s an increasingly critical component. You can’t begin to sort out the business and address the problems until you understand the state of things. Behind closed doors, when the focus is on strategy, it’s imperative that you have good data, even if it’s not what you want to hear.
“We’re often told by pros from all sides of the music industry that we deliver a lot of bad news. But we take it as a compliment because that means we’re telling the whole story.”
Wayne Rosso, Blubster’s ceo, and the man who used to run Grokster, makes no secret of it. “I always look to Big Champagne’s figures,” he says, as do significant numbers of the people on the other side of the fence - the people who run the Big Five record labels.
So, how reliable are the report and surveys, especially if their focus is online file sharing?
Whether the reports appear to be for or against a particular issue, if there’s an apparent slant in a given direction, it’s almost certainly down to the media reporting it, says Garland, guaranteeing there’s no bias on the part of the researchers and collators who put the reports together.
Where Does That Leave Us?
Despite the fact the odds of being sued by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) for sharing music online are similar to those of winning the lottery, Big Music has succeeded admirably in creating an aura of distinct terror around uploading, downloading and sharing digital music files. And it’s this which means you can’t believe surveys or reports centering on the way music is distributed online unless they’re based on straight data analysis derived from data taken directly from a physical source.
Surveyors investigating alcohol abuse, say, or ‘recreational’ drugs, expect the people they’re surveying to be, well, less than forthright. Now, add p2p file swapping to the list of dodgy subjects.
“It’s very difficult to get reliable information on topics like music file sharing,” Garland told me a week before the Ipsos-Reid came out. “And it’s particularly challenging in a climate of aggressive litigation, proposed legislation and what the RIAA calls ‘education’.
“It’s difficult to extract good data from respondents on these things.”
Every time we turn on the TV or open a newspaper, we’re reading about ISPs being compelled to identify their clients in connection with copyright infringement prosecutions and, “It doesn’t take a great stretch of the imagination to think: ‘Here I am in my home and these researchers have called me on my home phone, so they know who I am and where I live’,” Garland continues.
“And even assuming researchers’ best efforts to maintain my privacy, and given that they have no interest in identifying me, nonetheles, I may well imagine they could be compelled - just like an ISP - to identify me in conjunction with a civil litigation or, real horror of horrors, a criminal one.”
A Climate of Terror
The recording industry has worked hard to create this climate of terror and it’s their explicit agenda to want people to be disuaded from sharing files out of fear of the consequences that will result if they’re discovered.
“But respondents are in no danger from researchers,” says Garland.
“The critical difference between an ISP and a market research firm is: we researchers take great care to make sure we’re not in possession of anything that could identify someone.
“So when a market researcher calls you when you’re in the middle of dinner, that typically is the result of random digit dialling which actually ensures that although this company has phoned you at home, they’re not actually in possession of your home number, or of other identifying marks.”
However, even given that someone answering questions for a market researchers isn’t afraid of suddenly ending up on the RIAA’s *sue ‘em all* list, the majority will still be less than truthful in their responses, says Garland.
And that’s because in addition to creating the climate of fear, the music industry has also given file sharing an aspect of being somehow unwholesome - of being tainted.
Predictable Media Response
“It’s not unlike getting someone to disclose information about behaviours that are considered offensive, or about drug or recreational drug abuse,” he states. “People are uncomfortable discussing these kinds of things and they’re just as uncomfortable talking about file sharing with a stranger.”
There’s no such thing as bad PR for file sharing, and the music industry knows this, Garland adds.
But against that, he also points out that every time it comes up, it simply introduces the concept to more and more casual users.
In the meanwhile, the surveys are “of tremendous importance to the handful of people who can really be unduly influenced by the information in the surveys - “I’m talking about legislators and executives in the industry.”
Nonetheless everyone - legislators included - should, “employ a healthy dose of skepticism to any reporting of any kind - the media included. Satisfy yourself with the methodology and the agenda of whoever’s reporting the information,” says Garland.
“We’re all pressed for time, but it never hurts to have that little voice of doubt in the back of your mind.”
Be all of the above as it may, given that respondents (for file sharing, at least) seem to be so unreliable, what’s the point of doing a survey in the first place?
Could it be the companies that commission them are well aware that although at the end of the day the studies have no real value, they’ll generate very predictable media responses and that’s what they’re really after?
May 12th, 2004 at 4:10 pm
I like this article.
I’m surprised that no one in the US is clever enough to counter a lawsuit from the RIAA by saying that they aren’t paying the artists anyway (they’ve recently been forced to pay millions to artists who weren’t being paid royalties).
The main emphasis of their lawsuits was that downloading was hurting artists because they weren’t getting royalties, but then they weren’t paying them anyway ?
This appears to be a major breach of ethics by the RIAA.
May 12th, 2004 at 4:30 pm
I find it interesting that the music industry blames downloading for it’s loss of business. How do they come to that conclusion? Can they prove that the only or even the major factor causing their slowdown is downloading? The media never seems to challenge this conclusion. Surely other factors can be attributed to the music industry’s woes. How about price, content, etc.? The RIAA must employ the same PR angency that Bush used to convince America of the existence of WMD and the connection between Bin Laden and Iraq.
May 12th, 2004 at 4:58 pm
Will the RIAA and CRIA ever stop their misleading crap? To hear them complain, they never made a penny since people started sharing files on the internet. Here is a bit of info.
Total sales are down because of 2 main reasons. The economy has been on a downward slide since 2000 and was pushed farther down by 9/11 . Remember “It’s The Economy Stupid” ? Every damn industry except weapons manufacturing was down. Tourist industry, car sales, small and large product manufacturing: it ALL was down for over 3 years.
And total new releases by the artists themselves for 2000 and 2001 were down by over 25% . That means the choices to pick from was down by that much. But miraculously the dollars per release was up from $376,000 to $533,000. Those numbers are from the following site : http://www.azoz.com/music/features/0008.html
So the record industry cut their inventory (and artist investment) by over 25 percent and sales only dropped 4.1 percent, even though the economy is at rock bottom. Not bad. There were almost 12,000 fewer new releases for the consumer to choose from in 2001 than 1999, but the record companies are making more money per release than ever. Interesting stats that you don’t hear the RIAA talking about. chuckthecanuk also has a rant page that is truly insulting to the RIAA and thier “gestapo tactics” as he calls them. hahahaha. oh btw i dont share mp3’s online, only because i hardly ever listen to music.
May 12th, 2004 at 4:59 pm
Big Music has never confronted the fact that copywritten materials such as books and more recently music CDs, videos casettes and DVDs have been available to all at no charge via public library systems throughout the world. Why is downloading any different? Why arn’t they sueing the public libraries? M ight it be because they would be laughed out of court?
May 12th, 2004 at 7:53 pm
The “big 5″ had a very healthy increase in overall music sales in 2003. Just a tidbit to chew on…
May 12th, 2004 at 8:19 pm
I like it that he used the “T” word… Since even writers that are sympathetic to the idea of file sharing continue to use the irritating and misleading terms PIRATE and PIRATING over and over, we might as well refer to the RIAA as TERRORISTS. That’s what they are, right? Gosh, maybe the RIAA is somehow linked to Osama?
May 12th, 2004 at 9:01 pm
Yep … I stopped downloading .mp4 dvd movie rips when I realized I could get the actual DVDs from the library. Better selection than blockbuster, free rentals (late fee is only $1), fewer scratched discs. Course, it’s still a lot easier to get music over p2p. But it’s funny … when I’m picking up my movies, there’s always a ton of people taking out music cd’s. What’s the chance that someone DOESN’T copy them? I understand that with the movies, the majority of folks still don’t know how to copy dvd’s efficiently enough to make it worthwhile timewise, or even have the hardware and software required. But who doesn’t have what it takes to rip a cd?