Statistics
Sunday 25th December, 2005 20:17 Comments: 0
According to the RIAA and MPAA, 15597 file-sharers have been served with financial demands for copyright infringement in the US (Kazaa users accounted for around 94% of those). They also tell us that there have only been 3590 settlements. In other words, they have received a financial settlement in only 23.3% of cases. Statistically it seems that 76.7% of those caught in the USA just walked away. These are not statistics that the recording industries want people to hear. The odds of being identified and having to settle are therefore of the order of 3590:60 million, or 16713 to 1 against. The odds against being taken to court for downloading are therefore an even more staggering 60 million to 1 against. Put into context, people have a 1 in 300 chance of being misprescribed in hospital or a 10 million to 1 chance of being involved in an aircraft collision and dying as a consequence.
In most countries, including the UK, domestic file-sharing continues to be a civil and not a criminal issue. In general terms, uploading or sharing can result in civil action, albeit that the odds are very small. Technically the same could arguably apply to those downloading only. In practical terms, nobody has yet been sued for downloading only, and the prospects of such a case being successful are less than diminutive. In the UK, the prospects of such an action are currently nil, given that the BPI have confirmed they (currently) have no intentions of taking such action.
The point I'd like to make from all those statistics is that the current tactics aren't working, that P2P is here to stay (great news for distributing legal content, like Linux ISOs!), and that something needs to be put in place to help legalise and (more importantly) capture the money that would otherwise be lost. Places like France have started to realise this, with their National Assembly recently approving a proposal to allow private use of sharing copyrighted material (uploading content on the internet would remain illegal):
"Authors cannot forbid the reproductions of Works that are made on any format from an online communication service when they are intented to be used privately and when they do not imply commercial means directly or indirectly"
This is very similar to the Canadian law that allows you to copy CDs off your mate. The amendments come at an additional cost of 5 Euros a month for an individual's subscription to the internet (and is equivalent to the levy that has plagued recordable media sold in Canada). Some experts contend it's only fair to offload the cost of music onto the hardware that provides the media in the first place.
Professor Terry Fisher of the Harvard Law School's Berkman Center think tank calculated that a fee of 5 dollars per month on a broadband connection would compensate the recording and movie industries for 20 per cent of their current revenue. In an interview last year Jim Griffin, former director of Geffen's technology group, pointed out that the US consumer has rarely spent more than 5 dollars per head on music, so the recording rights lobby cannot plausibly claim to be being robbed.
The Parliament has voted to extend an old idea, traditionally deployed to solve copyright concerns with new technology, into the digital age. The mechanism is used successfully to compensate rights holders for radio play and public broadcasts (for example, in a bar) and songwriters.
The Parliament's vote is at odds with the position taken by the French government and the EU, which want to criminalize fire sharers. We'll have to see if it makes it through the French Senate.
In most countries, including the UK, domestic file-sharing continues to be a civil and not a criminal issue. In general terms, uploading or sharing can result in civil action, albeit that the odds are very small. Technically the same could arguably apply to those downloading only. In practical terms, nobody has yet been sued for downloading only, and the prospects of such a case being successful are less than diminutive. In the UK, the prospects of such an action are currently nil, given that the BPI have confirmed they (currently) have no intentions of taking such action.
The point I'd like to make from all those statistics is that the current tactics aren't working, that P2P is here to stay (great news for distributing legal content, like Linux ISOs!), and that something needs to be put in place to help legalise and (more importantly) capture the money that would otherwise be lost. Places like France have started to realise this, with their National Assembly recently approving a proposal to allow private use of sharing copyrighted material (uploading content on the internet would remain illegal):
"Authors cannot forbid the reproductions of Works that are made on any format from an online communication service when they are intented to be used privately and when they do not imply commercial means directly or indirectly"
This is very similar to the Canadian law that allows you to copy CDs off your mate. The amendments come at an additional cost of 5 Euros a month for an individual's subscription to the internet (and is equivalent to the levy that has plagued recordable media sold in Canada). Some experts contend it's only fair to offload the cost of music onto the hardware that provides the media in the first place.
Professor Terry Fisher of the Harvard Law School's Berkman Center think tank calculated that a fee of 5 dollars per month on a broadband connection would compensate the recording and movie industries for 20 per cent of their current revenue. In an interview last year Jim Griffin, former director of Geffen's technology group, pointed out that the US consumer has rarely spent more than 5 dollars per head on music, so the recording rights lobby cannot plausibly claim to be being robbed.
The Parliament has voted to extend an old idea, traditionally deployed to solve copyright concerns with new technology, into the digital age. The mechanism is used successfully to compensate rights holders for radio play and public broadcasts (for example, in a bar) and songwriters.
The Parliament's vote is at odds with the position taken by the French government and the EU, which want to criminalize fire sharers. We'll have to see if it makes it through the French Senate.