

RIAA spends 58mi on lawyer fees, gets about 2% back. - steiger
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2010/07/riaa-spends-58m-on-lawyer-fees-gets-about-2-percen.html

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nudge
"It recovered $1,362,572, for a 2.3 percent return rate, according to Beta
News. We’re not math majors, but that’s bad, right?"

Well, I was a math major, and the answer is "Not necessarily." (Not that you
need any math to understand why)

Is money recouped through legal avenues the only way the RIAA stands to
benefit by launching a massive legal assault? No, of course not. It also gets
to scare the bejeesus out of people who might have thought about downloading
or uploading pirated music, and choose not to, because of the thought of a
lawsuit threatening their financial future. So, in theory, there's the
possibility that the RIAA has also gained by reducing the loss of earnings due
to piracy.

I'm not saying this _has_ been a success for the RIAA, or even that it has
been effective at all. Obviously piracy and legitimate sales are not zero-sum.
But it's not quite as simple as this article (and the various others making
the same point) makes out.

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maxharris
This is irrelevant. First, the record companies don't have to justify what
they do to anyone, as long as they aren't violating anyone else's rights. The
RIAA initiated these lawsuits because the rights of the companies they
represent are being violated by people who are stealing their music.

This Beta News recovery statistic is short-sighted. If the recording industry
doesn't defend itself against piracy through these lawsuits, they will lose a
lot more than $57 million. I view their actions as $57 million well-spent on
self-defense. I also think it's a shame that people have such low respect for
intellectual property that this is necessary.

If you don't believe in intellectual property, ask yourself: how would your
startup would fare without IP? If you create something new, no one else has a
right to it. They should only have it on terms that you choose, because
without you, it wouldn't exist.

Certainly, there is a great deal of benefit to collaborating with others. But
without rights as defined above, collaboration on mutually beneficial terms is
impossible (e.g., both immoral because someone gets ripped off - and
impractical because innovation ceases).

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BigZaphod
Minor title nit: I was momentarily confused as to how the RIAA spent 58
_miles_ on lawyer fees. :) The usual way to write this would be "$58m" and not
"58mi".

~~~
goatforce5
You can spend frequent flyer miles on more than just free flights these days.

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bitwize
Scaring thousand if not millions of potential music thieves straight:
priceless

~~~
muhfuhkuh
It will just serve to make the p2p world devise ways to hide their actions
from the plaintiffs (like peer blocking), or make them use the myriad
alternatives that don't record ip addresses or removes the p2p aspect entirely
(which is much lower "heat") such as youtube audio rippers,
megaupload/rapidshare, usenet, or straight up http download services like
beemp3.

If the mainstream "pirates" can't figure the above out (and, really if they
can't, then how did they figure out bittorrent?), legit services like last.fm,
pandora, spotify, or streaming stations from shoutcast and the like provide
free music tailored to genres and user preferences.

Finally, perhaps people will just buy the damn things from itunes or amazon. I
guess they'd "win" then.

