RIAA Wants to Legalize Peer-To-Peer in the United States

RIAA (The Recording Industry Association of America represents the recording industry interests in the United States. The association is formed from a large number of record producers, and marketers, covering about 90% of the US market.

In September 2003, RIAA started a lawsuits against 261 people in the United States for the illegal sharing songs using peer-to-peer networks, launching a never to be heard before campaign against its own clients.

As a result, over 20,000 people were taken to court, or have accepted different deals in order to avoid the legal consequences. Showing some examples, following some of these deals, Brianna LaHara, age 12, was forced to pay $2000, and four students from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Princeton University and Michigan Technological University have been obliged to pay between $12,000 and $17,000 in yearly fees, during 2003 - 2006.

Electronic Frontier Foundation is presenting the United States Government a method to implement a collective license, in order to compensate to loses of artists, and of copyright owners for the peer-to-peer file sharing, considering that over 60 million people in the United States have been using at a point file sharing software. The Electronic Frontier Foundation claims that peer-to-peer file sharing has increased by 300% in the 2003-2007 period, the number of people using it gr from 3,8 million to 9,4 million.

On the other hand, RIAA considers that the legal initiatives function, indicating that according to recent studies, 73% of the present peer-to-peer users are aware that it is illegal to make available copyrighted music to others using this kind of software, from only 37% in 2003.

Also the number of users that are downloading music at home using peer-to-peer networks increased from 6,9 million in 2003, to 7,8 million in 2007 because of the increased quality of the Internet connections. For example, the broadband connections have doubled since 2003, therefore more and more people are able to share, and download files using peer-to-peer networks, with out worrying about the Internet speed.

The profits of the record labels in the United States, obtained from selling music have suffered a loss of 11,5 billion dollars in 2006, from only 14,6 billion dollars in 1999. Adding to this, RIAA did not win any lawsuits, being forced to pay over $68,000 in expenses in the Capitol Records vs Deborah Foster case. RIAA spokesman, said that the judges decision in this case was an error, and an isolated incident in the situation where the person conducting the illegal activities is not responsible for the Internet Service Provider account that has been used, and that RIAA is trying to obtain evidence in order to reveal the real person guilty for this.

In conclusion, peer-to-peer file sharing is a growing problem for the music industry in the United States, and measures need to be taken in order to at least cover some losses, as fighting it did not have any results.

Source: http://www.riaa.org/