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SHIFT: The RIAA legal machine — the rhythm is gonna get you
A federal jury delivered a landmark verdict in a copyright-infringement case between the RIAA and defendant Jammie Thomas, a 30-year-old mother of two from Minnesota. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is the trade group that represents the interests of the record business.
The facts of the case are this: Thomas, using a Kazaa account that was traced back to her computer, made copyrighted music available for others to use on a peer-to-peer network without proper licenses. For this, she was fined $220,000. Her annual salary is $36,000. After the jump: the question of innocence or guilt aside, is the amount of the monetary punishment extreme, or is it an appropriate amount, and useful for making Thomas an example to deter others from sharing files?
Further down the list was Gloria Estefan. This one threw me. See, I know the guys in her band. We all went to school together. We all worked together after college. These guys aren't megastars. They're hard-working musicians. I know her recording engineer. We worked together on many sessions. He was in a horrific car accident last year with an uninsured motorist that left him in a coma for months, and is probably still struggling with bills.
Once you drop below the legends and headliners, you encounter real, ordinary people working in the industry, trying to buy health insurance, pay their mortgage and send their kids to college. The music industry isn't just big artists and faceless corporations. They're Jorge, Clay and Eric. Depriving them of royalties and salaries, the way they make their living, is wrong. It's obvious that if files are available for sharing, then legitimate sales decline. Copyright law, specifying fines to strongly discourage breaking the law, is there to protect Jorge, Clay and Eric. Unfortunately, none of these guys will see a penny of this. The RIAA will probably settle for 1/10 of the amount in the settlement, which will still be a huge blow to the defendant. However, none of money goes back to the copyright owners — it goes to the RIAA's funds to help stop more illegal downloads. I could almost understand the amount of the fines if it went back to the people it was alleging to protect. It's not. How do you spin this tale to make anyone feel that justice has been served?
An audio engineer based in Atlanta, Leslie Shapiro has been covering consumer electronics for almost a decade. Her work has appeared in many publications, including Sound & Vision, Crutchfield Advisor, and How Stuff Works as well as AOL. A longtime consultant and legal advisor for the electronics industry, she has a penchant for Bianchi and Colnago Italian bikes, and her favorite word is "synchronicity."
By trsim at 5:03 AM ON 10/21/07
I know I'm posting this really late, but I really appreciated this article. You really dealt with the situation in a good manner. I read an article after the verdict was delivered and one of the jurors had commented that one of the reasons they made the choice on the amount per song was that they didn't want it to be too low to make other "sharers" or down-loaders to think they could get away with a "slap on the wrist." (Although $750x24 = $18000, which is still more than I make in a year, and I don't have that many big bills to pay.) They wanted to "send a message" to people sharing or downloading music.
My problem is that no matter how much action the RIAA takes, that only provokes these people more. They only look at something like this, get mad, and then say, "Well I'm going to download or share more just to make them mad!" I'm not saying it's good logic, and I'm not in ANY way trying to say that I think illegal downloading or sharing is OK. But the RIAA should really consider reevaluating how they handle music in the future. I know there are people on the lower end in the music industry that are affected by this, but like you pointed out: they don't see this money. Simply slapping people with a monetary fine isn't going resolve this situation.
By mediumsteve at 7:10 PM ON 10/22/07
People wouldn't steal music if it was appropriately priced.
People need music in their lives to be happy. Society needs that to happen because it makes the 40+ hour workweek less unbearable.
The idea that corporations get to dole out joy to us at $1 per track is hideous. Further, it's bad for the music business all around, which means struggling musicians.
Unfettered access to digitized music allows us to discover bands we never would have risked $15 on. And it allows us to spend our money on other things -- which is like as not to mean we still spend it on music.
If you consider other models of doing business you can make music sharing a non-issue, plus expand the profit and influence of the industry and its business types. Maybe musicians ought to earn their money like everyone else, for performing a service -- rather than expecting to collect royalties every time someone sings "Happy Birthday" in public.
Take as an example The Grateful Dead, who have sold plenty of albums through the big distributors (400 million worldwide?). They actually encouraged people to tape them, thereby creating a whole subculture of tape-traders. The experiment made them more popular by orders of magnitude, which in turn led to vastly greater income from live-concert tickets and t-shirts, etc.
By samami at 1:15 PM ON 11/07/07
It sounds like the IRRA is just using scare tactics!!! As people hear about a $220,000 fine, they will think twice about downloading that next song.
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samami:
It sounds like the IRRA is just using scare tactics!!! As people hear about a $220,000 fine, they will think twice ...More »