Music Labels Plant Online Decoys, Consider Suing Individual Users.

July 4, 2002 9:09 AM

Music Labels Plant Online Decoys, Consider Suing Individual Users. The music industry is stepping up its fight against online piracy, planting "decoys" on free peer-to-peer services and considering lawsuits against individual song-swappers, sources said on Wednesday.
posted by ncurley (9 comments total)

UH yeah sure, I'd fire the guy that had this nice idea at once and then fire myself for accepting it !

Quick maths show this is going to be hella expensive for them ! Consider the cost of lawyers then add that you're not going to recover the costs from suing users, they don't have as much money as the laywers will cost

Then consider that scare techniques never really had a long term effect : you scare 1000 people, make a lot of media advert about that (that is going to cost too) and the short term effect is achieved. Half an year later it's redo from start.

Now consider that people that wanted to pay $0 music will not buy music if it costs $20-30, even if you scare them. So your profits will probably not grow, your marginal cost is going to rise and your profits will sink even more, because the additional copies sold are not likely to offset the costs.

As a stockholder I'd look at this news as pure horror, but then again stockholders usually are clueless and that was demostrated in more the one occasion.
posted by elpapacito at 9:21 AM on July 4, 2002

hmmm... interesting...

i would think that at the very least this is entrapment...

i would argue that if the Music Labels(and therefore the legitimate owners of the media) are voluntarily using a P2P mode of delivery that has no costs associated to each download, this provides consent for the media to be downloaded... therefore dissolving all grounds for the Music Labels' cases
posted by steveb at 9:47 AM on July 4, 2002

Via Daypop: Here are Brad King's opionated take on the strategy (wired.com), and Janis Ian's long, well-thought-out essay on the RIAA's falacies.
posted by macrone at 11:14 AM on July 4, 2002

i would so apply for this job.

man... i'd bust so many people left and right.

well... anyone swapping big label stuff. anyone swapping indy stuff... nope. they'd be safe.
posted by jcterminal at 11:56 AM on July 4, 2002

is anyone else not afriad of the RIAA?
posted by Satapher at 12:12 PM on July 4, 2002

I'm with steveb.

Imagine trying this in a record store. A record store employee hands you a bunch of cds for free on the way out the door and then the cops swoop in for the shoplifting bust.

If the record company is behind a file swapper, it's a form of distribution.
posted by eyeballkid at 1:57 PM on July 4, 2002

I think the distribution of junk files and the lawsuits against individuals are going to be entirely seperate from each other. Just my thoughts on how they planned to play this out.
posted by howa2396 at 3:13 PM on July 4, 2002

Junk files on P2P systems? that can't be!

If you're ever the victim of such a legal threat from a RIAA scumbag... er, lawyer, plead not guilty separately to every single charge. Such charges would have to be served and sued for individually. This way the industry's idle threat could hugely backfire in spiralling legal costs.

Accept no settlement, that's pretty much the first rule.
posted by clevershark at 7:39 PM on July 4, 2002

I'm not afraid of the RIAA.
posted by isobars at 12:41 AM on July 5, 2002