The RIAA is Full of Hot Air
September 17, 2003
By Lance Ulanoff

Aesop related a parable in which the Sun and the Wind dispute which is more powerful. They decide to settle the argument by seeing which can strip the cloak of a passing traveler. The wind attempts first, blowing mighty gales. But the more violent the blast, the closer the beleaguered victim draws the cloak, and the wind finally relents. The sun, instead, shines warmly, and soon the sweating traveler has not merely cast off the cloak, but is cooling off in a stream, clothes piled on the bank.

I heard this story as a child and assume it's one that many people know quite well. The lesson is certainly universal: force does not always rule the day. Judging from the Recording Industry Association of America's increasingly aggressive response to its customers sharing of music on the Internet, the organization never heard the tale or forgot it.


Initially, when Napster launched in June of 1999, the recording industry ignored music swapping, perhaps because the music wasn't CD quality, broadband was in a mere fraction of US homes, and music downloading was still a practice generally confined to über-geeks. And not many predicted the upheaval Shawn Fanning's idea would cause in the recording industry.

The RIAA finally took note, but too late; millions of its customers had tasted free music. The association reacted by yelling, flailing, and going on a general attack to root out the problem. What happened with Napster made clear to me that rather than analyzing what drove the ripping and downloading explosion, the RIAA responded instinctively. In its blind zeal, it began coming down hard on the site operators, their users, and the technology.

With the law on its side, the RIAA had relatively little trouble shuttering Napster. What the industry didn't count on was the Whac-A-Mole game it chained itself to, as similar yet much more decentralized technologies sprang up in the place of Napster and the others bludgeoned into holes. Peer-to-peer music swapping has grown quickly in the last few years (as has broadband coverage) and now, by all accounts, dwarfs the original scene under Napster.

In theory, the popularity of electronic music transfer could actually give the industry a new way to approach its now alienated customers and resolve what it sees as a pirating issue. The music giants did start looking (or let others do the looking) for ways to build businesses out of the public's demand to download music, and some services like iTunes, Rhapsody, and EMusic evolved—but the RIAA also redoubled the gusts of legal wind it was blowing in the direction of anyone who might be downloading or hosting copyrighted music. A few months ago, the association announced it would prosecute individual music swappers, and it has had subpoenas issued to about 1,600 alleged traders. Needless to say, an industry already facing heavy criticism for what some perceive as Luddite thuggery and overpriced products, now found itself attacked for persecuting small-time criminals—usually college students, who are among its primary legitimate customers.

Despite its misguided ways, the RIAA is right. There's no question about that. But although downloading copyrighted material without paying is illegal, the RIAA should have learned by now that it cannot keep technology bound and will not change habits by prosecuting its customers. Would any other industry even consider doing that?

The recording juggernaut is not alone in confronting piracy. The film industry is struggling against the problem, too, but is somewhat luckier, because duplicating encrypted DVDs is harder and still largely a geek's game (although it's a booming Asian business). And many of the knock-offs found on city streets and on the Internet fail to rival their legal counterparts in full-screen (larger than a 14-inch LCD) quality.

But those are limitations which, thanks to rapid progress in encryption cracking, home DVD authoring, and compression technologies, are rapidly disappearing. Slowly but surely, the film industry is facing the same problem besetting the big five music companies—BMG Entertainment, EMI Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group. Isn't it odd that nearly all the summer blockbuster movies had one big box office weekend followed by 40 to 60 percent drop-offs? Could former theatergoers be turning to pirated DVDs? Whatever the cause, the movie industry is not ignoring film piracy.

Unlike the RIAA, however, the movie behemoths seem to be taking a more practical approach—at least for now. The Motion Picture Arts Association recently launched ambitious ad campaign doesn't shout at consumers that stealing is wrong and warn them to stop or else. Instead, these expertly produced infomercials (running on TV and in movie theaters) attempt to make consumers feel guilty, taking the tack that pirating films hurts average Joes. A gaffer might not get health insurance, for example, or a set builder could fail to find work. And, of course, they throw in celebrities like Ben Affleck, hoping you'll actually watch the 60-second spots.

Can these commercials save the movie industry from the RIAA's current fate? I don't know, but the film industry is certainly using everything it knows about messaging to plant seeds of doubt in the minds of consumers who might be considering buying those DVD knockoffs or downloading DiVx copies of the next Spiderman. The RIAA appears to have taken note of the MPAA's softer approach and, no doubt, the cascade of criticism from customers. It has recently announced amnesty for those who admit to stealing music if they clean out their shared drives and promise not to do it again.

The RIAA has also promised not to go after the small-time thieves. Of course, without a definition of what constitutes small-time, this might not mean very much. Oh, it's still prosecuting the original 1,600 and just added another 260 to the list, but I guess there's hope for millions of others. A far more encouraging sign comes from Universal, which has taken the intelligent step of knocking down CD prices by as much as $6. Now if all the other major players would only follow suit.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of all this is that music and movie companies are nearly all owned by the same few media conglomerates, yet the approaches of the different media segments are as different as night and day.

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