The Real Reason the RIAA Backed Off Lawsuits: Money
The Real Reason the RIAA Backed Off Lawsuits: Money
Posted 07/14/2010 at 1:59pm
| by Ryan Whitwam
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A few years back, the RIAA announced they would be stopping the large scale lawsuits against consumers. At the time people speculated about the cause, but thanks to some new figures uncovered by p2pnet's Jon Newton, we can be fairly sure the reason was largely financial. In 2008, the RIAA paid over $16 million in legal fees in order to recover $391,000 through settlements. Not the best business to be in.
It gets worse the farther you go back. In 2007 they spent over $24 million to pursue alleged infringers and got back only $515,929. It 2006, it was $19 million spent to coerce people into shelling out $455,000. So in this three year period, the RIAA spent $64 million to recover about $1.3 million.
Seeing the continued spread of p2p in 2008, the RIAA may have concluded that any deterrent effect of the lawsuits was minimal at best. At that point it becomes harder to justify making all those lawyers filthy rich. Is it at least possible for the RIAA to repair their image with consumers after this PR nightmare?
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hei
July 20, 2010 at 11:56pm
Wow! Some amazing effects. Definitely some great ideas here. Thanks for sharing!
essjay22
July 16, 2010 at 2:22pm
Had they only used all that money to find new ways to deliver the music ppl wanted instead of bullying us just to save their own (gold plated) imcompetent asses. *heavysigh* They really blew it shutting napster down but that article has already been written showing RIAA's gross stupidity in doing so. RIAA's god is Mammon.'nuff said
IFLATLINEI
July 16, 2010 at 9:17am
Even with out this I didnt think they much much of a good image but yeah this made things alot worse and its hurt the artists they also claim to represent.
Mighty BOB!
July 15, 2010 at 3:37pm
To answer your question, no, it is NOT possible for them to repair their image.
JohnP
July 15, 2010 at 5:01am
RIAA could have dumped the money into advertising executives, or lawyers, or perhaps the artists who need the money. Oops, skip that last one, RIAA would never want the artists to get too uppity now, would they?
Athlonite
July 15, 2010 at 4:39am
HAHA fricken HA take that RIAA atleast you cant blame us for your stupidity had you not of bothered in the first place you'd be 64mil richer
Play till it breaks then learn how to fix it!
sternmyl
July 15, 2010 at 4:29am
This seems an awful lot like the drug war. It has no forseeable end and the authorities controlling the enforcement policy seem to think that throwing more money and intimidating people will solve the problem.
Michael Ellis
July 14, 2010 at 11:07pm
I agree with the dude below in that the goal was never financial. It was always to intimidate people. It was to remove this pervasive belief that "there are too many people doing it...it'll never happen to me. I'll never get caught....." Honestly, I think were they failed was in getting enough attention while they did this. Outside of geek circles, if you tell someone who pirates that they could be prosecuted in a mass lawsuit, they will typically make clear that they had no idea that was possible.
In today's society, it is all about getting the most coverage, and to be truthful, the RIAA failed royally.
ps Public relations...what public relations?
HP Pavilion Elite e9280t AW020AV-ABA
Tenhawk
July 15, 2010 at 10:00am
Of course the goal was financial.
You think they started this out of some sense of justice? Please. The financial endgame just wasn't the settlements, they were hoping to curtail piracy and thus see an increase in sales.
Ok, so given that as the goal, they still obviously FAILED horrendously. How do I know? Because if they hadn't, they'd still be suing the pants off of single mothers and twelve year olds. (Incidentally, shouldn't a judge have stepped in when they tried to sue the pants off a pre-teen? I'm no expert, but that sounds kinda creepy to me...)
Anyone who thinks that the goal wasn't financial is just being naive. And anyone who thinks that they might actually have succeeded in their goal... well, you're on their marketing spin payroll, right?
medavid16
July 14, 2010 at 9:19pm
Well, I can see there are lots of people who simply conclude "stupid, moron, dumb, idiots, blah blah blah" but I just wanted to point out a few things
1) I do legally pay for my content, and I'd say only a smallllll few copyright things annoy me. Very very few, I'd say only a handful of games/movies.
2) I don't think RIAA would be that stupid, I think they knew they would take a big bill. I think the goal was to prove a point, and that was where the real pricetag was. To make it a point to consumers that they will go after consumers if need be.
3) Granted #2 was a good point/goal for them, they can only chase consumers for so long before their wallets run out.
Piracy is always going to happen, and they've said that too. Their goal was to lower the overall rate, to what extent they've reached their goal, I have yet to see it documented anywhere on the web.
So please stop saying stupid, or moron, or idiot or anything that's basically pointless. It was planned, and the end result is not money spent = money return. It's money spent hoping for piracy rate to decrease... which it did... but it comes back quick as well.
Tenhawk
July 14, 2010 at 10:44pm
See, here's the problem...
What you don't seem to realize is that in point #1, you are PAYING for this little failed experiment. Yeah, they use your money to pay for their failures. What's worse, it was obviously going to fail from the start. That's my problem with the whole deal.
So I'll keep calling them names, thank you very much. They're not spending their damned money, they're spending OUR damned money by way of increased prices and even TAXES! If I were tossing your money down a hole you'd call me names too.
If they even remotely THOUGHT that they were getting a reasonable decrease in piracy numbers they would still be suing folk. The fact that they have given up is proof positive that the whole plan was a botched failure. So yeah, after wasting 64 million in lawyers fees plus god alone knows how much in other botched attempts, they shrug it off, pass the costs on to us, and probably start plotting how else to waste our money.
Yo Ho, Yo Ho.
Athlonite
July 15, 2010 at 4:56am
yes just about fell of my seat LOLing aswell
Play till it breaks then learn how to fix it!
Tenhawk
July 14, 2010 at 4:53pm
My apologies. :)
The problem is that I honestly can't come up with any words that sufficiently describe how utterly disgusted I am with the twits in charge of 'copy protection' methods and laws.
It would be one thing if any of the methods *worked*, but foisting one failure after another on us and making US pay for it?
<sigh>
There are no words in the english language that properly describe how pissed I am over it, so I get creative by times.
Tenhawk
July 14, 2010 at 4:08pm
Actually, the sad THINGS are that 1, these imbeciles didn't figure this out before calling the lawyers in the first place and, 2, those self same goat-f$@kers aren't the ones who actually are footing the damned bill.
Honestly, how immeasurably stupid do you have to be to think that you're going to get more money out of mostly lower income people than you're going to pay freaking LAWYERS in order to get the settlements? Any four year old who's watched TV could tell you that. Oh yeah, the twits in charge of the RIAA aren't smart enough to match up against a four year old.
And secondly, here's where I have to tip my hat to the idiots for showing some brains I guess... They managed to slip the lawyers bill to people even stupider than they are... the rest of us.
Why, someone please tell me, WHY is it that in the war on Piracy the legal customers are the ones getting caught by all the cannon broadsides?? I mean, really now! If in the 18th century the British Armada went out and looted every merchant ship in some bizarre attempt to nail pirates, but left the actual pirates alone... by God, I'd be raising the Jolly Roger in a hurry!
Screw law, screw morality... If I'm to be PUNISHED for paying for content... well, Arr Matey.
It's a Pirates life for me...
GreenTurtle
July 14, 2010 at 5:11pm
So those of us who actualy paid for music, paid more per cd, so the RIAA could throw it to some lawyers. Great..... to TPB !!!!
gendoikari1
July 14, 2010 at 3:39pm
The best way to save money is to just axe the RIAA/MPAA altogether.
tnrccola
July 14, 2010 at 3:33pm
In all seriousness, I look forward to David Gerrold's and Quinn Norton's perspective on this.
nikki_gx
July 14, 2010 at 3:25pm
Ok, this is the very first evidence that I've seen where the industry has lost money due to pirating. If the RIAA was really ever concerned with their image, they wouldn't have taken their wrath out on little girls. This was a no-brainer from the get go, don't know why everyone has been making such a stink about it saying that downloaders are they same as shoplifters. There's no comparison. I'm not saying downloading for free is right, it's like jaywalking on a street with no traffic. Even better analogy would be street-walking. Another victimless crime that people like to make political hay with.
I Jedi
July 14, 2010 at 5:09pm
pirating - taking property that isn't yours; not paying for it
shoftlifting - taking property that isn't yours; not paying for it
mind = blown
Danthrax66
July 14, 2010 at 5:27pm
pirating - taking property that isn't yours; not paying for it
shoftlifting - taking property that isn't yours; not paying for it that cost the producer money because they had to create and ship the cd; money gets taken away from the retailer.
So yeah the difference is the part that actually cost the store money because dling something from the internet doesn't cost them any money because if I am dling it I wouldn't have paid for it anyway.
Oh and the only person you steal from when you download music is the record label and fuck them.
http://torrentfreak.com/why-most-artists-profit-from-piracy/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/study_piracy_does_not_deter_the_production_of_music_books_films.php
http://www.theroot.com/views/how-much-do-you-musicians-really-make?page=0,0
I'd rather buy a concert ticket than a $1000 worth of cd's I support artists by going to concerts.
aviaggio
July 14, 2010 at 5:24pm
Since digital files aren't "property" your crude attempt at an analogy fails.
winmaster
July 15, 2010 at 10:28am
Since digital files are intellectual PROPERTY, your crude attempt to justify something that is both illegal and immoral fails.
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SPAM filter?
I Jedi
July 14, 2010 at 3:17pm
Come on, people, the RIAA knew it wasn't profitable for them to do what they did. I mean, I don't honestly think that they thought they would receive all of their money back again from these court claims. Obviously they were just trying to scare people out of the idea of pirating music; however, seeing as how it didn't work, they saw very little reason to continue on with it. The RIAA's ultimate goal was to get people to stop pirating music, not to get back their losses.
mx11
July 14, 2010 at 2:55pm
I have almost completely stopped purchasing music on cd because of this. If i buy anything anymore its from independents or small lables. I refuse to give them money to sue our friends and neighbors.
Mark17
July 14, 2010 at 2:37pm
What a bunch of morons. What were they thinking? The only way they can improve there image is to just disappear.
someuid
July 14, 2010 at 3:04pm
You hit the nail right on the head. The MPAA needs to go bye-bye as well.
Pokedex1010
July 14, 2010 at 2:17pm
Obviously, they couldn't keep trying to sue people for ridiculous amounts of cash forever. I don't know what idiot thought it would "help". Basically, the last reason for someone to not "risk" pirating is now gone.
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