Upwards of 30,000 individuals have been targeted with lawsuits from the Recording Industry Association of America since their campaign against peer-to-peer file sharing began in 2003 (Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2008). Despite the years of efforts that the RIAA put into combatting peer-to-peer file sharing, the results of their campaign have only served to increase the popularity of peer-to-peer file sharing and increased the total number of users. Because such a small group of individuals were targeted with lawsuits, it is speculated that the RIAA was attempting to make an example of a few to coerce the many into voluntary compliance.
Supporting Data from Big Champagne
Over the period that the RIAA was targeting people with lawsuits (between September 2003 and June 2005), a data analytics organization called Big Champagne reported that the number of active users in peer-to-peer sharing had doubled. American users were comprising the majority of all peer-to-peer file sharers while the number of users continued to increase at a 20% rate each year after 2005. Due to the time correlation of the increase in usage and the notoriety of the lawsuits, I speculate that the rise in of peer-to-peer file sharing usage was directly due to the popularization of the lawsuits.
2007 - 2008
Throughout the 2 years following the lawsuits, the popularity of peer-to-peer file sharing services and networks continued to rise (Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2008). Teenage users started to become a new majority of peer-to-peer users because they were able to transfer the downloaded songs onto trending media players like MP3 players and iPods. Though downloading to digital media devices was a very popular method for file sharers of the time, the number of users was dwarfed by the amount of people that were simply making copies of compact disks. The New York Times reported the results of a poll from that period stating that 69% of teens assumed that it was completely legal to make copies of compact disks and distribute them to friends. The RIAA admitted that the copying of compact disks was such a problem that it accounted for 37% of all file sharing. Other smaller avenues of file sharing have been revealing themselves as time goes on, such as file transfer over messaging applications or invite-only networks.
Enforcement and Public Education
It is interesting to question whether the RIAA intended the lawsuits against individuals to draw attention to a policy that the public would generally overlook due to a lack of interest and education. A lawyer for the RIAA, Cary Sherman, reportedly said “Enforcement is a tough love form of education” which leads me to believe that the RIAA was using the lawsuits to spread awareness about their intentions (Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2008). The RIAA explained some of its intentions in stating that they were unable to pursue justification with the peer-to-peer file sharing networks themselves because they had been protected by a previous court ruling, thus they decided to bring charges against individual users of the services. Although I can understand why the organization ultimately took the actions that it did, I think that they could have done a better job at creating awareness around the issue before the lawsuits and perhaps developed alternative methods to create an accountability for all users in violation of their policies. A survey that was taken years after the lawsuits were instigated gave indications that awareness of the possible consequences of illegal file sharing. However, the increasing popularity did not seem to wane after the rise in awareness of peer-to-peer file sharing’s illegality. Another survey suggested that most young computer users were more worried about receiving a computer virus when downloading than receiving an RIAA lawsuit. After 2006, the RIAA stopped popularizing their attempts at enforcement and resultingly experienced a decrease in public awareness.
Creating Legal Incentivization
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (2008) reported that legal mainstream services have experienced increasing popularity in the wake of the RIAA lawsuits. The largest U.S. retailer of music was stated to be Apple’s iTunes which compromises about 30% of the market revenue in the nation. Other schools of thought and methods of legitimate file sharing have been tested in the market such as DRM-free work; but none of these methods have slowed the use of peer-to-peer file sharing networks which remains as the most likely way listeners obtain music.
Domestic Leeching and Offshore Uploading
On a peer-to-peer file sharing network, the act of downloading files without sharing them is known as leeching. Because the RIAA chose to only target people who were uploading files to the file sharing networks, there was an assumption among users that leechers would not be targeted which resulted in the popularity of this downloading strategy. If the user who is sharing the files is uploading from outside of the country, it also becomes more difficult to enforce for the RIAA who operates nationally. New solutions have been since created like software that further obfuscates the identity of a user and private social network groups that are used to continue to share files with little fear of RIAA enforcement.
The Perspective of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
According to the authors at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (2008), the continued efforts of the RIAA to discontinue the prevalent use of peer-to-peer file sharing applications and networks among the many listeners in the United States has utterly failed. Technological creativity and advancement will continue to pressure the music industry in new and exciting ways and the music industry should develop channels that appeal to their customer base and the technologies they like to use. The EFF describes the normalcy of copyright disputes between copyright holders and the makers of popular new technological platforms, and the level of adaptation required to maintain high levels of interaction with their listeners. They advocate for a music service that has a free tier for listening but also allows users to pay for supplementary features. The prospective service could use engagement analytics to determine the amount of revenue distributed to the owners of the content.
Conclusion
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (2008) reported only increases in peer-to-peer file sharing usage through the entire RIAA campaign to eliminate the problem of peer-to-peer file sharing. The continuous rise of popularity of file sharing services both throughout the period of the RIAA lawsuits and since has proven to the market that peer-to-peer file sharing is a valuable technology that must be appropriately utilized by the music industry to be dealt with. It is of my own conclusion that the RIAA has made no substantial effect to reduce the amount of loss of revenue due to peer-to-peer file sharing because their own actions caused them to increase the popularity of the undesired action. I think that the most helpful campaign for the RIAA to prospectively undertake is to co-develop a music sharing platform with their user base that conversationally addresses all the needs of the listeners, the artists, and the regulating bodies based on concrete feedback and continuous revision.
References
(2008). Electronic Frontier Foundation. https://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-five-years-later#7