RIAA Knows (But Tried To Hide) That Most ‘Unpaid’ Music Acquisition Comes From Offline Swapping http://t.co/g79CtPfy
So, let me get this straight. The RIAA knew that SOPA would not, in fact, make any significant difference and yet they were pushing for draconian legislation that would indeed cause all sorts of security problems with the Internet. If arrogance and stupidity were criminal offenses these guys should be locked up for the rest of eternity. At the very least it’s time for everyone – politicians included – to stop paying any attention to them.
There problem is a business model problem, and the fix is 100% in the hands of the RIAA members. Remember, the music industry is going great – more musicians are making more money overall from their craft than ever they did when signed to the RIAA’s members. (There’s a whole other set of bad behavior in refusing to pay musicians their due, but let’s leave that for the moment.)
It’s just that the shiny recorded disc market is fading away. What a surprise! Not.
Torrentfreak got their hands on a “confidential” presentation put together for the RIAA by NPD, which shows pretty clearly that most of the “unpaid” music that people get comes from person to person copying, via hard drive trading and burning/ripping from others. P2P and cyberlockers actually make up a relatively small percentage.
And yet, that’s the dinosaur’s entire focus, and they’re quite prepared to ruin the Internet for everyone to achieve almost nothing for their members, and absolutely nothing for musicians they claim to represent (but treat incredibly badly).
Of course, what would be much nicer (and a hell of a lot more effective) is if they finally woke up to the fact that this is a reality — and that there are ways to deal with it on the product and business model sides, rather than on the enforcement side. If they put one-tenth the effort into helping out with that as they do for pushing for greater enforcement, the online music landscape would look so incredibly different and would be so much better for everyone.