Pigs on the wing: Thoughts on the music industry

My heart goes out to Jammie Thomas.
She was the first person to actually take the RIAA’s case against her alledged illegal downloading of music to trial, and she lost. A federal jury in the US found that she shared copyrighted music online, and are forcing her to pay $9,250 for each of 24 songs that the RIAA, who represent the major recording labels, decided to focus on. It’s only the first battle in what will inevitably be a long war–a war against absolute control of how music is distributed to the end listener, and absolute control of our culture.
Hearing music, at its purest core, is supposed to be a pleasurable experience. We are surrounded by music on a daily basis–music that enlightens us, music that sympathizes with us, music that strengthens us. Technology allows us to take music wherever we go as a companion, a soundtrack to our daily routine. After being brutalized by a recording industry that lacks any real ethical consideration for the people who create it, I can only picture Jammie Thomas returning home, tearing down her stereo system, putting all of her CDs in a box, and crying whenever her favourite song, downloaded from the Internet, shows up on a radio station or comes over the PA system in a department store.
Music, which is supposed to be pleasurable, has now completely destroyed someone’s life.
Of course, the RIAA is taking their traditional stance whenever the subject of file sharing music comes up. To quote from a CTV News article, Cary Sherman, who is the president of the Recording Association of America, said bluntly, “This case has put [the issue] back in the news. Win or lose, people will understand that we are out there protecting our rights.” I’m sure the entire major recording industry is breathing a huge sigh of relief at the moment. What a fine example to make of someone in a lawsuit that doesn’t even seem to have a real basis in law.
Consider this: If I’m accused of committing a murder, I go to trial. According to the constitutions of both the United States and Canada, the prosecution has to prove without a shadow of a doubt that I committed that murder–providing concrete evidence that, yes, nobody can deny that I was the person who committed this heinous act. The RIAA, in what they consider to be an act of benevolence, decided to focus on only 24 of the 1,702 songs that they say Ms. Thomas was sharing on Kazaa.
Let’s say, for example, that you could purchase each of those songs online, legally, for $1 per song. This makes the purchase price $24. Now, let’s assume that the online retailer is making a profit of $0.20 per song, making the actual cost of each song a whopping 80 cents. Assuming these figures are accurate, at $9,250 per song, this would represent 11,562.5 people who had illegally downloaded each song. In a court of law, I would think that to arrive at the figure of $9,250 per song that the RIAA would be obligated to prove that 11,562.5 people had, without a shadow of a doubt, downloaded each piece of music specifically from Ms. Thomas in order to arrive at those damages. So, what does this dollar figure represent?
The RIAA states that their “conservative” estimate, that the entire U.S. music industry loses $300 million per year on counterfeit CDs, and that “calculating losses for online piracy is a difficult task”. In fact, nowhere on the RIAA’s website can I find a single dollar figure even estimating the recording industry’s losses online. So, as you can imagine, I find it very suspect that a dollar figure can be levied per song against a single individual. The only remaining argument that could be made is that by such a stiff penalty, the RIAA is looking to punish, and to make an example of people like Ms. Thomas in an effort to promote the major record labels’ agenda. I won’t go into great detail about my suspicions that the artists will never receive a single penny of this money–this is obvious to anyone who knows anything about the music business at large.
The major labels are not starving by any means. In 2002, it was estimated that the sales of CDs alone generated 649.5 million dollars, which is an incredible amount of money by any standards. Given that artists receive, on average, somewhere between 2 and 5 percent of the actual profits once the label’s original investment has been paid back out of royalties, it does not take a mathematician to deterime that the labels’ profits are probably more per unit than any other industry. However, most of the independent labels out there are reporting an increase in CD sales every year, where the RIAA reports 6 to 10 percent drops yearly in the number of units sold.
This tells us what the $9,250 per song that Jammie Thomas is now going to be forced to pay represents–the desperate behaviour of major record labels afraid to lose control of the creation and distribution of music, and that you and I are not as stupid as the record companies have traditionally preferred to believe. Most independent labels are in business more for the love of the music they are producing than the nickel-and-dime aspect. They feel that the music you’re buying is quality music, and foster that quality by having faith in the artist’s music as opposed to dictating to the artist what kind of music they will be making. They are also at the forefront of the digital music era, coming up with the innovations that are working with the technology available in order to get their music to more people than was previously possible. The majors want to stop this at all costs–having control of the music you hear has been extremely profitable for many, many years, so in the minds of the companies, adapting comes with far more risk than forcing that control, and they do so by….suing their customers.
I only hope that Ms. Thomas is able to get past this travesty of American justice, and hopefully music will still be able to make her feel good. That is, after all, its only real purpose.

Further reading:
http://www.azoz.com/music/features/0008.html — a discussion regarding the dollar figures as produced by the RIAA
http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/print.html — Courtney Love’s speech about piracy
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A2553365 — part two of a BBC feature on the music industry
http://negativland.com/albini.html — “The Problem With Music”, an essay by noted producer Steve Albini

~ by jason m norwood on October 5, 2007.