Mass Hysteria at RIAA

Last October, US Senate Commerce Committee chairman and former presidential hopeful John McCain hosted NBC's long-running comedy show Saturday Night Live. In a spoof of the political talk show Hardball, McCain did a devastating impression of US Attorney General John Ashcroft, a fellow Republican. Speaking of homeland security, the faux Ashcroft intoned, "This country won't be safe until every American is in jail."

That sort of irony is apparently over the heads of lawyers and executives at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). On Wednesday, June 25, the music industry trade group announced that it would escalate its legal war against music fans who continue to offer or download collections of MP3 music files. Hundreds of lawsuits will be launched against alleged copyright violators over the summer, in the wake of a recent US appeals court ruling that Internet providers must reveal the identities of subscribers suspected of sharing unauthorized copies of music or movies. The ruling exposes millions of Internet users to the threat of litigation, according to RIAA president Carey Sherman. "We're going to begin taking names," Sherman told reporters. File sharers must relent or "face the music," he added.

Despair has given way to desperation. Now entering its fourth year of declining sales, the music industry has decided that threatening its customers with massive fines—from $750 to $150,000 per song—is a good public relations move, despite strong evidence that the most enthusiastic file-sharers are also the most voracious buyers of recorded music at full retail. "This latest effort really indicates the recording industry has lost touch with reality completely," said Fred von Lohmann, attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "Does anyone think more lawsuits are going to be the answer? Today they have declared war on the American consumer."

They have also declared war on themselves. If the industry's failure in the mid-1990s to recognize the inevitability of the Internet and to embrace its commercial potential was a bit like punching a hole in the bottom of its boat, mass lawsuits are like spraying it with an automatic weapon. How long will it be until the RIAA sinks completely? "The recording industry is not going to win if all they do is sue people," said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a Washington-based advocacy group for technology and copyright issues. "They can sue all they want, but that's not going to make CD sales go up."

Announcements of the threat caused a brief dip in the amount of file sharing, which quickly rebounded, according to a June 28 report from the Associated Press. "The threat appeared to have little effect on the pace of downloading over the most popular file-sharing services," read the report. KaZaa, one of the most popular file-sharing services, saw a drop in traffic during the first 10 hours after the announcement, but it surged back within 24 hours, with between 3.4 million and 4.4 million users. Richard Chernela, spokesman for KaZaa's corporate parent Sharman Networks, described the drop as a "consistent-to-normal fluctuation." On Thursday, June 26, file-sharing service Grokster reported an increase in traffic between 5% and 10%.

The legal threat certainly will raise the level of technological warfare between the entertainment industry and computer users. File-sharing software that hides the identities of providers and recipients, such as Filetopia, is already available, with new, more effective versions to come. Mass litigation will also put a dent in the music industry's already ailing bottom line. Lawsuits aren't cheap to produce, especially in large quantities, and the industry stands little chance of collecting damages from the few violators who get caught in the net. Big fish ("substantial collections of MP3 files," in RIAA parlance) will be targeted first, with smaller fry to follow, according to industry officials, who wouldn't specify exactly how big a library of songs had to be for its owner to receive one of the first subpoenas. At present, those who engage in small-scale file-sharing appear to have little to fear.

Some music fans characterized the RIAA's latest move as a "witch hunt," an appropriate description of a hysterical reaction against an imaginary or unidentifiable threat. The RIAA's efforts against its own customers are at best misguided and at worst suicidal, given that the real damage to the music industry's profits are due to increased competition from other forms of entertainment, and from rampant foreign commercial piracy, against which litigation is futile.

A witch hunt like the one the RIAA is about to launch will only hurt innocent people and further damage the industry's already tarnished image. "It's time to get artists paid and make file-sharing legal," said the EFF's von Lohmann. His organization encouraged Congress "to hold hearings immediately on alternatives to the RIAA's litigation campaign against the American public."

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