The Parties...

So without further ado, here goes our little foray into downloading. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to stick with the RIAA in this discussion. The MPAA has recently announced that it will follow the RIAA's lead and start suing those persons who provide movies on peer to peer networks. (See my earlier comment here.) Therefore, the analysis applies to both groups equally well.

In today's post, I would like to explore the various parties that are involved in downloading. On one side, you have the content "owners" and on the other side, you have the consumer/customer. The content owners are typically the music publishing companies (in most cases, not all, the music publishing companies own the rights that are detailed in Section 106 of the Copyright Act.). They in turn pay fees and dues to the RIAA, who is nothing more than the trade association representing the interests of the content owners. From the RIAA:

Its [the RIAA] mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality.

Another thing to note is that the RIAA does NOT represent all of the possible music publishing companies that are in existence. Again from the RIAA(see RIAA link above):

RIAA members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States.

They merely represent those companies that are the big money players (see Time Warner, BMG, etc.). The RIAA does not directly represent the artists that produce the music, in fact some would say that they do not represent the artists' interests at all.

So let's briefly consider what the major goal of these content owners. Their number one goal is to make money. I know, I know the RIAA says that they are all for education and giving back to the communities. Let's be realistic though, the recording industry (and by default the RIAA) doesn't have the best track record treating the artists fairly, much less the consumer (via Wired, I'll explore their tactics in a later post). Recently, Elliot Spitzer, the NY Attorney General announced that they had recovered $50 million in unpaid royalties owned to artists. A tasty morsel from the announcement:

Spitzer noted that while royalty disputes are common in the entertainment industry, this particular problem did not involve disagreement over the terms of the recording contract or the amount of the royalty payment. Instead, it was a matter of the record companies not maintaining accurate contact information to mail royalty payments. Pursuant to the agreement, the companies will make a greater effort to locate and stay in touch with artists who are owed payments. (It should be noted that this was an agreement with the individual record companies and not the RIAA itself. That being said, the RIAA represents the interests of these organizations and will do exactly what the record companies tell them to do).

In other words, the record industry has failed to pay its own artists, but wants to make sure that consumers know where they should buy their music from. As major corporate conglomerates who have shareholders to answer to, their major goal is to make money and please those shareholders. Therefore, all actions that they choose to take, or more importantly NOT TAKE, are vital to the coming discussion. For a fun first salvo, check out Mark Cuban's(owner of the Dallas Mavericks among other things) take.

As with many things in life, it takes two to tango. So where would be the RIAA and the recording industry be without you, Mr. and Mrs. John and Nancy Public? In deep shit, that's where. Ok I'll get of my high horse for a moment. The consumer has a choice to legitimately buy music or to take that music illegally. Unfortunately, that is a bit too black and white for my tastes. It is my belief that most consumers, given the option, will legitimately pay for music that they want. The consumer is pretty happy-go-lucky until he/she starts realizing that they don't own the music. Which in case you are wondering, you don't own your music (or software) you simply license it (which is why you can't legally encode your CD's into mp3's and then get rid of the CD's). As times goes on, consumers start finding out how little they can really do with their legitimately bought music(or media). For two great stories check out this and this. Ultimately, the consumer says screw this and searches for media that is unencumbered by ill-thought digital rights management systems and licenses.

So the typical consumer is caught in the middle of trying to legitimately buy music and taking advantage of all the cool things you can do with it, and what the music industry wants YOU to do with it(buy one copy on CD, another for your mp3 player, another for this, etc.. see my earlier post). This is where the rub ultimately lies.

The RIAA and its ilk, say they want to control piracy (we'll explore this later especially global piracy which makes US internet piracy seem like a joke) but what they really want is to preserve the status quo; which is controlling what you can do with their music. The consumer, on the other hand, wants to buy music they just don't want to be told what they can and can not do with it (I'm obviously ignoring willful copyright infringement like copying books, poems, etc.).

Tomorrow or the next day, I will explore the issues that all this presents and start in on some of the law applicable to this discussion.

Feel free to comment.