RIAA vs. the World

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has led a very public campaign against music copyright infringers. To date, the RIAA has filed over 30,000 complaints against file sharers. Many times intimidation is used to scare infringers of the prospect of a lengthy and costly trial, and to encourage quick and costly settlements.

One such case has caught the eye of Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson after a Boston University student, Joel Tenenbaum, 24, was accused of copyright infringement. At issue is Mr. Tenebaum’s downloading of 7, yes, 7 songs and making 816 songs availble through the Kazaa online file sharing program. Mr. Tenenbaum offered to settle for $500 and the RIAA countered with $12,000.

So, let’s step back a minute to see what law the RIAA is using to wield this authority and then take a look at how Mr. Nesson seeks to argue the constitutionality of a federal law. At play here is the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999. This act basically allows the private groups like the RIAA to administer civil enforcement of a criminal law. Damages for infringement can run anywhere from $750 to $30,000 for each shared file. It can also go as high as $150,000 per “willful violation.”

For the RIAA and record companies side of the story, they state that this Act and the resulting laws are “intended not only to compensate the copyright owner, but also to punish the infringer (and) deter other potential infringers.”

Mr. Nesson says this is unconstitutional and that the RIAA is also at fault for using intimidation as a strategy to squeeze money out of infringers. His stated goal is to “turn the courts away from allowing themselves to be used like a low-grade collection agency.” That’s rather blunt.

I will continue to keep an eye on these proceedings. A bigger issue to this case is that of the record companies strategy. It makes perfect sense. The record companies have one product, the record. And historically, people purchased the records. Now, it is unnecessary to purchase the records (all legal and moral issues aside). This is perhaps unfair to record companies because they paid to produce the material and are not getting paid for the material. So while some websites out there are now trying to see if consumers would even be willing to pay $0.03 per song, the RIAA (on behalf of the record companies) is trying to get that per song price back up.

It is unlikely that consumers will all of a sudden begin trending towards paying for music that they can obtain for free. Suing your clients doesn’t exactly fit under good customer service. I know the record companies are trying alternative methods, but this one is really creating a black eye for the industry. For them, it’s an unfortunate turn of events, but one that should have been easily predicted. Now it’s time to focus on the future and stop suing and intimidating people who downloaded 7 songs. Since record labels have been slow to diversify into other aspects of an artists career, they are now paying the price and watching live concert promoters and merchandise sellers eat their cake.

Let’s see how Mr. Nesson does in court.

Stay tuned,
Erik
erikrostad.com