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RIAA paid its lawyers more than $16,000,000 in 2008 to recover only $391,000
- sgman 16y agoYes, but they did it to "encourage" people to purchase legal music which presumably increased their revenues.
- aj 16y agoIndeed. But a lot of reports (non on hand atm) state that this is not a direct correlation. that said, the figure quoted also (presumably) includes legal fees for matters other than suing "pirates"/copyright infringers. So perhaps not a very accurate figure but indicative at best.
- philh 16y ago>that said, the figure quoted also (presumably) includes legal fees for matters other than suing "pirates"/copyright infringers. This seems to be correct. The numbers come from pages 8 and 9 of the linked PDF. All it says is the law firms provided "legal services". I'm sure they have many more uses for legal services than just suing pirates. All we really know is "the RIAA recovered $391,348 from filesharers".
- Helianthus16 16y agoNo one will miss them much. "The RIAA? Or their lawyers?" Ohoho, ahah, I crack myself up. edit: ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT I'M SORRY I'M NOT FUNNY THIS LATE AT NIGHT I'LL NEVER MAKE BAD JOKES AGAIN
- OoTheNigerian 16y agoGo and sin no more.
- adamilardi 16y agoHow dare you make a joke on hackernews. I would downmod you if I could. Maybe you should post on facebook..ouch!
- reitzensteinm 16y agoMore than $17.5 million.
- ars 16y agoThis isn't really the whole story. They are assuming that their member companies will make more money as a result of less piracy. And that additional money should/would be added to the total. (Note: I did not say if it will actually reduce piracy, just that that is their assumption, and is why they are willing to pay this.)
- baddox 16y agoThree things: This will not result in less piracy, pirates spend more money on music than non-pirates, and frequently-pirated music makes more money than less-pirated music. Since January, there has already been one album that I have literally only bought because of piracy (I never would have heard of the band were it not for piracy). Last year I bought 2 or 3 albums which I never would have bought were it not for piracy. How many albums do "normal" non-pirating consumer buy a year?
- michaelfairley 16y ago> This will not result in less piracy, pirates spend more money on music than non-pirates, and frequently-pirated music makes more money than less-pirated music. B and C do not follow from A. Even though pirates spend more money than non-pirates, who's to say they wouldn't spend even more if they couldn't pirate. And, frequently pirated music makes money than less-pirated music because music that is popular is more likely to be pirated.
- baddox 16y agoFirstly, I didn't mean that A logically implies B and C. I meant them as three separate statements. How is it possible that they couldn't pirate? Unless the world governments plan on actually filtering the entire internet clean of piracy, then all they'll be doing is criminalizing piracy, which is already the case most places.
- TomOfTTB 16y ago"Pirates spend more money on music than non-pirates" Without taking a position on the accuracy of the claim I will say the study that determined that was deeply flawed. Let me quote the first article that comes up on Google... The Norwegian study looked at almost 2,000 online music users, all over the age of 15. Researchers found that those who downloaded "free" music – whether from lawful or seedy sources – were also 10 times more likely to pay for music. This would make music pirates the industry's largest audience for digital sales. This is flawed because people who are actively seeking music can reasonably be called "music enthusiasts" who would normally buy more music than their counterparts who don't actively seek out new music. Note the study says the ones who were categorized as "not pirates" didn't even use free sources to listen to new music. So in order to get an accurate answer as to how piracy impacts sales you'd have to compare enthusiasts who pirate to those who don't.
- baddox 16y agoNow they can add $15,609,000 to their "money lost due to piracy" figure.
- scotty79 16y agoI'm not sure. This would be first real number there. Unless you count the DRM costs in.
- teamonkey 16y agoDoes anyone know how much a music DRM system actually costs to develop? The voice of the internets says that it costs at least a bajillion dollars, is a huge financial burden on the music industry and they're passing the costs on directly to the artists. Realistically I'd guess it costs more like a couple of million at the very most which, spread over every product sold for a period of several years, is actually peanuts.
- awongh 16y agoI think everyone knows that you don't sue random torrenters on the internet hoping to make a profit. This was really part of a huge marketing campaign, where your audience reads in all the big papers that some college student is being sued for $50,000 dollars and then are dissuaded from illegally downloading music... that's the intent anyways....
- cabalamat 16y agoUnless you are ACS:Law -- they seem to be making a profitable business from it.
- cmelbye 16y agoWow. Well that's definitely not sustainable, so it will have to end sometime.
- dotcoma 16y agohey, they found a good online business model at last! ;-)
- pmccool 16y agoI imagine they spent a lot more on advertising their anti-"piracy" message. Compared to that, the ROI is probably pretty good. I therefore expect the lawsuits will continue, more's the pity.
- vidarh 16y agoWhat's interesting to me is that at least in the UK there's been a noticeable shift in the anti-piracy message. Most telling is the anti-piracy ads in cinemas. (EDIT: I realize RIAA deals with music recordings only, and that it's the same for their UK counterpart; the ads used to be pretty much the same and the shift has been much more dramatic for movies) A year or so ago in the UK the cinema's were full of "if you pirate you support organized crime and terrorism and you're pretty much satan" messages with ominous music and threats about how you'd get thrown out and more if you dared bring out any kind of recording device. Now it's "thank you dear, nice customer for coming and paying to see the movie and helping us make more instead of pirating"... It's almost creepy what a turnaround it's been. Maybe my long tradition of raising my finger at the old ads had an effect, or maybe some execs have finally realized that antagonizing your paying customers isn't as smart as it seemed to them at first.
- JeffJenkins 16y agoThat isn't that unreasonable. The US spends far more on preventing counterfeiting than the total value of counterfeit money. The over-reaction is meant to act as a deterrent so that the problem doesn't become more wide spread (and in the case of currency, remove faith).
- c1sc0 16y agoGood, I wholeheartedly recommend the RIAA to continue on this obviously profitable path.
- shareme 16y agoits not the only recovered $391,000 its the protection of a RICO possible racket whereas through fraud-like accounting they 'steal'musicians money.
- scotty79 16y agoCan we just declare this law as unenforcible and make it void?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]