Litigating Against the Tide

While the music industry steps up its hunt for illegal file sharers, three Boston schools have taken a step towards preventing it from obtaining information about students’ downloading activity. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has subpoenaed Boston College, Boston University and MIT to release the names and contact information of students trading files on university networks. The schools have announced that they do not intend to comply with the RIAA’s requests, because the subpoenas were filed in the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia—not Massachusetts.

While it remains to be seen what the schools will do if the RIAA re-files from another district, the schools were right to challenge these subpoenas, both legally and on principle. The right to download shared music is a freedom worth protecting. While the music industry often succeeds in producing only one or two entertaining songs on an overpriced album, individuals should be able to enjoy the few songs they appreciate without being coerced into buying tracks that they do not want. On the flip side, filesharing often introduces consumers to new artists, whose albums they may later choose to purchase. Additionally, file sharing often provides access to music that is otherwise hard or impossible to find through standard channels.

But the RIAA subpoenas that will force schools to disclose student information belie a more fundamental flaw in the association’s method for eliminating file sharing. It is profoundly unfair to target and punish a small subset of the offending population, hoping to make examples of them and scare others away from file sharing. And even if this were justifiable, it is not an effective deterrent. When the initial announcement of the lawsuits against file sharers was made in June, user traffic on Kazaa, one of the most popular platforms for sharing music files, was lower for 10 hours, but bounced back to normal by the next day.

The suits are currently targeting the users who have the largest collections of files, generally 1000 or more. But even these students are not big fish for the industry to fry. These students are not trying to create a mass database of files to bootleg for profit but are simply interested in more songs for their own personal use and should not be targeted. Their only crime is tying up university networks with their high-traffic sharing, and individual universities—not the federal courts—should take action.

The RIAA claims to be protecting the artists, but these lawsuits stifle both artists and listeners. DJs who create their own mixes from popular songs—a form of expression also being affected by the music industry’s attack on sharing—are prevented from producing unique pieces that are often appreciated by listeners.

Record companies blame file sharing for a 31 percent drop in compact disc sales since mid-2000—a number that may overstate the effect of sharing due to the contracting economy—but they should be finding ways to generate revenue that do not depend on litigation.

Reducing and capping CD prices—which the Universal Music Group decided to do last week, cutting wholesale prices by up to 30 percent—would be a more effective way to win back the support and cash of music lovers. The RIAA could also take a hint from Apple’s hugely successful iMusic, which sells individual song files over the Internet directly to consumers, as many other legal downloading programs don’t currently offer a selection of music as vast as systems like Kazaa. There is a huge potential for growth in this revenue-generating stream.

The RIAA has become so focused on punishing a select few to make their point—they filed 261 lawsuits against individual file sharers across the country this Monday—that it misses the point entirely. The age of downloading is upon us and litigation will not stem its arrival. The music industry will be better served by adapting than by fighting the tide.