The entertainment industry has always baffled me. That’s probably why I never became a pop star. Well that and lack of talent. Actually, I understand the entertainment part of the industry, it’s the copyright policing groups like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) that confuse me. This group is infamous for their Gestapo-esque tactics including lawsuits against file-sharing teens who pirate copyrighted content. The rationale goes something like this. Actually, exactly like this. I quote the RIAA:
It’s commonly known as piracy, but it’s a too benign term that doesn’t even begin to adequately describe the toll that music theft takes on the many artists, songwriters, musicians, record label employees and others whose hard work and great talent make music possible.
Music theft can take various forms: individuals who illegally upload or download music online, online companies who build businesses based on theft and encourage users to break the law, or criminals manufacturing mass numbers of counterfeit CDs for sale on street corners, in flea markets or at retail stores. Across the board, this theft has hurt the music community, with thousands of layoffs, songwriters out of work and new artists having a harder time getting signed and breaking into the business.
One credible analysis by the Institute for Policy Innovation concludes that global music piracy causes $12.5 billion of economic losses every year, 71,060 U.S. jobs lost, a loss of $2.7 billion in workers’ earnings, and a loss of $422 million in tax revenues, $291 million in personal income tax and $131 million in lost corporate income and production taxes. For copies of the report, please visit www.ipi.org.
And so the gallant RIAA ventures forth to sue those scoundrels into submission. Thereby, no doubt, recouping some of the $12 billion pilfered. In what universe does this make any sense? Our customers aren’t buying our products because our business model sucks, so we sue them. You bet.
Yeah, but if you were one of those poor starving musicians who are championed by the RIAA you might have a different opinion. Might I? Let me tell you pilgrim, I am one of those poor starving musicians (well a poor musician at any rate) and like many of my more talented and famous peers, such as David Draiman and Janis Ian, I get nothing from the RIAA. Except severe gluteous maximus irritation. I think David Draiman summed it up pretty well in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle.
“This is not rocket science–instead of spending all this money litigating against kids who are the people they’re trying to sell things to in the first place, they have to learn how to effectively use the Internet.” Draiman asserts that the actions taken by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are protecting corporate profits, not artists: “For the artists, my ass…I didn’t ask them to protect me, and I don’t want their protection.”
So is this going to be another interminable, pointless rant about the RIAA? Fortunately, no. It’s not.
Finally a breath of fresh sanity stands against the RIAA legal juggernaut. A Harvard law professor, Charles Nesson, along with two third year law students have hit back hard on the RIAA’s efforts in a court filing, where it’s noted that the very basis for many of the RIAA’s lawsuits is very likely unconstitutional.
Imagine a statute which, in the name of deterrence, provides for a $750 fine for each mile-per-hour that a driver exceeds the speed limit, with the fine escalating to $150,000 per mile over the limit if the driver knew he or she was speeding. Imagine that the fines are not publicized, and most drivers do not know they exist. Imagine that enforcement of the fines is put in the hands of a private, self-interested police force, that has no political accountability, that can pursue any defendant it chooses at its own whim, that can accept or reject payoffs in exchange for not prosecuting the tickets, and that pockets for itself all payoffs and fines. Imagine that a significant percentage of these fines were never contested, regardless of whether they had merit, because the individuals being fined have limited financial resources and little idea of whether they can prevail in front of an objective judicial body.
The RIAA intimidates and steamrolls accused infringers into settling before they have their day in court and before the courts can weigh the merits of their defenses. The inherent dangers in allowing a single interest group, desperate in the face of technological change, led by a voracious, cohesive, extraordinarily well-funded and deeply experienced legal team doing battle with pro se defendants, armed with a statute written by them and lobbied and quietly passed through a compliant congress, to march defendants through the federal courts to make examples out of them should lead this Court to say “stop.”
What can you add to that? Except So long, and thanks for all the fish. And you go Charles!
