RIAA-Type Legal Campaigns Said Unsuited to Ending Piracy
UNIVERSAL CITY, Cal. - While piracy remains a source of deep concern for labels, the reality is that the music industry as a whole is enjoying unprecedented success overall, speakers said Wed. at the Digital Media Conference here. Copyright lawyer Ken Hertz, who represents artists’ interests, said ring tones and other digital avenues are producing huge revenue: “Five years ago, record sales were the issue, with labels saying their industry was at risk because you can’t compete with free. But record sales are only a part of music sales. In fact, the music industry is healthier than it has ever been in its history. This may be the beginning of labels migrating away from record sales” as their main business.
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While TV and movies have going digital more successfully, most notably through Internet streaming, the music industry has been unsuccessful in changing consumer attitudes because of its pricing, Hertz said: “The record companies have a hostile audience because they are being charged so much money for a bit of information they know costs next to nothing to produce.”
That has resulted in a double standard among younger music consumers. Albhy Galuten, vp-Sony Digital Media Technology Strategy, said: “When you talk to young kids, they don’t really believe in the idea of copyright. They don’t believe taking a song on P2P is the same as stealing shoes from a store.”
But beyond piracy, Galuten sees a more imminent problem. “The average iPod owner buys about one album a year. Most of the music comes from their own CDs which they have ripped. As we move into a digital world, all the friction we rely on
- going to a store, buying the physical CD - is going away. If you think ahead 5-8 years, when we have really high bandwidth, it'll be possible to send entire collections over the Internet. We have a lot of problems to deal with when we eliminate friction.” But that can also create opportunities, Hertz said: “When we move to a friction-free world what you end up with is 10 million My Space pages. Then how do you find anything? The answer is to go to a trusted source to act as a filter. If you can get consumers content faster, they'll pay you to do it.”
RIAA efforts to discourage piracy were misinterpreted, Hertz said: “The strategy was to send a message, not to necessarily pursue the public in general. The effort was not to stop piracy but to raise awareness that there were potential consequences for file sharing.” And while legally that was its right, Hertz said it was a public relations disaster which further alienated consumers: “The RIAA cast a pretty broad net, and there wasn’t much regard for individuals. They didn’t care if the defendant would be devastated by the legal fees associated with being hauled into federal court.”
“RIAA felt they needed to send a message by the lawsuits,” said lawyer Mark Litvack, whose firm represents studios: “Litigation is an arrow and a quiver but you cannot litigate your way to ending piracy… But I understand the argument that the music industry went too hard, too strong and could have used that money toward solving the problem of digital delivery to consumers. If you don’t get content to consumers when they want it, pirates will prevail.”
It’s not just consumers’ attitudes that need to change, Hertz stressed: “You can’t expect a digital file to be treated like a packaged good.” He also said that, despite content owners’ complaints, copyright protections have consistently gotten more stringent. “Nothing made today will be in the public domain during any of our lifetimes. That was not the intention when the Copyright Clause was adopted.”
- Valerie Milano