AfterDawn: News

DMCA is a failure for the content industry declares RIAA president

According to RIAA President Cary Sherman, the DMCA doesn't work for the content industry because it doesn't make service providers responsible for policing copyright infringement.

In statements made as part of a panel discussion at an event hosted by the Technology Policy Institute, Sherman said, "the DMCA isn't working for content people at all."



He went on to explain, "You basically cannot monitor all the infringements on the internet," later adding, "everybody has to do something about piracy."

This line of reasoning is nothing new for the RIAA, but it remains as flawed as ever. It requires that you accept a number of assumptions which simply don't hold up to any real scrutiny.

The most obvious is that there's any way to stop piracy. It's easy to say somebody has to do it, but there's no evidence anyone actually can.

According to the Sherman the solution is for everyone from ISPs on up to do get involved. But this creates some significant legal problems.

How does an ISP monitor the content of on their network without violating federal wiretapping law?

And that's without considering that figuring out whether fair use is involved requires human intervention, which would automatically disqualify the provider from DMCA safe harbor protection.

So if ISPs can't find infringement what about services like RapidShare? Sure they could use a filtering system like YouTube has implemented, but what's to stop people from switching to a new service with no such arrangement in place?

And who is going to pay for all these proposed changes?

Technology doesn't just appear out of the ether and start working. The RIAA 'plan' would require a never ending cycle of development, testing, implementation & troubleshooting. That means an equally never ending cost in man hours and hardware.

You won't find any offers from the labels to pay for it in their talking points, so apparently it's not just everybody's duty to lend a hand. It's also our responsibility to foot the bill.

Which leads to the most obvious question of all. What does the public get for a major overhaul of our legal system and significant financial investment?

It appears we get to help the RIAA pretend it's still 1998.

Written by: Rich Fiscus @ 25 Aug 2010 14:04

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• 14 comments

• sssharp

  There sales are down, that leads the management to new ideas to keep their jobs. Just stop producing music if your industry is losing money. People will still live a life and enjoy the days as they pass. Music is a luxury not a necessity.

  25.8.2010 15:14 #1

• dEwMe

  RIAA is a failure. They are obsolete and need to find new ways to make a living. Expecting my ISP to monitor everything I do isn't and should never be legal! Who is responsible for these morons? The artists or the labels? I'd be embarresed if they were representing me!!!
  
  
  

  Just my $0.02,
  
  dEwMe
  

  25.8.2010 15:22 #2

• Azuran

  Originally posted by sssharp: There sales are down, that leads the management to new ideas to keep their jobs. Just stop producing music if your industry is losing money. People will still live a life and enjoy the days as they pass. Music is a luxury not a necessity. That's just the thing. Music is still a profitable business and they're rolling in the cash despite all their claims of losing billions of dollars. It's just plain business sense. If it's not profitable cut your losses and get out. Obviously the music industry is till making tons of money.
  

  25.8.2010 15:26 #3

• Tecbot

  When i see a 10+ year old cd still priced at $25+ i just laugh at these guys...all the money they spend on this crap and all they have to do is lower the prices to a level that's reasonable. Is $20+ a cd reasonable...No we learned that the last 10+ years so why are the prices still the same....
  
  In 1999 where I live blank cds had a levy put on them it increased the price of cds by 38% from 1999 to 2007 they collected $242 million dollars to pay out to artists when the cds could have been used for powerpoint or photo storage or whatever. Well this tax basically enraged about everyone i knew who at the time never used cds for actual music until the tax came out since they were paying artists for music anyway might as well fill up some of the disks with music how can it be a infringement if they are getting money weather or not you actually dl there music even before the levy everyone was paying $.21 per disk to the music industry....
  
  Now this is what created a inrush of millions of pirates and with the technological advance of mp3 players the industry has been sitting high and dry since trying to figure out why everyone is pirating movies and cds when they created there own grave basically.

  25.8.2010 16:10 #4

• ZippyDSM

  Ya the DMCA goes to far to prevent you to use the stuff you buy so ya...it is a failure....
  

  Until lobbying is a hanging offense I choose anarchy!
  Ah modern gaming its like modern film only the watering down of fiction and characters is replaced with shallow and watered down mechanics, gimmicks and shiny-er "people".
  http://zippydsmlee.wordpress.com/

  25.8.2010 17:35 #5

• Tristan_2

  Another fine example of a company bitches if it doesn't gets its way. The RIAA is wanting to look like the UK's copyright law right now if you think of it with this statement. It'll be interesting if the DMCA begins to outlaw practices Copyright law to an extent, what the Media companies do and prevent them for furthering up the limit of a copyright,what would the RIAA and other forms of it do then? Stories like this begins conspiracy theories and with this particular story you can't blame people for thinking what the RIAA might pull to get their agenda threw.
  

  25.8.2010 19:46 #6

• llongtheD

  So its up to the ISP's to police copyright infringement? I thought that the RIAA's fear tactics, and frivolous lawsuits were supposed to do that.
  Who else is getting sick of multi-billion dollar corporations demanding tax payers pay for their cost of doing business?
  
  

  If your fish seems sick, put it back in the water.

  25.8.2010 21:01 #7

• DXR88

  Vive la Révolution.
  
  One day people will wake up and smell the bullSh!t we've been given, or we'll suffocate on it.
  

  Powered By
  
  

  26.8.2010 00:07 #8

• Notcow

  "we're not kicking our customers hard enough!"

  26.8.2010 00:29 #9

• KillerBug

  Originally posted by ZippyDSM: Ya the DMCA goes to far to prevent you to use the stuff you buy so ya...it is a failure.... If it were not for the DMCA, I would still have cable TV...and the DMCA is about to be voided by the new secret agreements that will be even worse. I sure hope they enforce it; as the current writing will make it illegal to sell CDs, DVDs, BluRays, Digital Downloads, or just about anything!

  26.8.2010 01:12 #10

• vurbal

  Originally posted by ZippyDSM: Ya the DMCA goes to far to prevent you to use the stuff you buy so ya...it is a failure.... That's true. It is a failure for content products in that draconian DRM makes their product less valuable.
  

  Freedom of speech is ultra important so stupid people will make their stupid statements so we know how stupid they are.
  
  - Ted Nugent

  26.8.2010 08:37 #11

• Mysttic

  Quote:I thought that the RIAA's fear tactics, and frivolous lawsuits were supposed to do that. Unfortunately with the courts favoring more the public recently than the RIAA, that too is costing them too much $ to fight for a bottom line they never deserved to get in the beginning.
  
  All they can do now is keep bitching and watch as eventually even the courts will tire of their rants, so live with lower pay and inevitably risk destroying their own creation.

  26.8.2010 10:43 #12

• Jemborg

  "It's also our responsibility to foot the bill."
  
  That about sums it up. That's always been their argument. They still haven't got over the old days of superprofits and whine that all the "pirating" equals "lost sales".
  
  Struth, they shot themselves in the proverbial boot by not dropping their prices ages ago.
  

  Its a lot easier being righteous than right.
  
  
  

  31.8.2010 16:54 #13

• escuridad7

  as I notice companies are only waining about money but they never say we need the money to pay the singer or bands our people who work there.
  
  not just that I saw a brand new CD's on f.y.e for to a $1 to .25 cents each I though was going be any crappy music but when I listen was good music so yeah I never though Good Music CD's would be sold for that Cheap. people takes blames the pirates even this CD's or Music is sold so for a very low Price people do not like to buy DRM music because are to big sometimes or quality of the music is not good with DRM and they don't play right in some mp3 devices even computers. People likes Quantity with great Quality.
  

  31.1.2011 04:50 #14