RIAA / CRIA Propaganda Debunked
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), along with its Candian brother (the CRIA), has been lobbying for stronger copyright legislation, claiming that it has experienced significant financial losses due to illegal music downloading on peer-to-peer (P2P) services.
Writing for First Monday, Michael Geist details the elaborate myths the RIAA and CRIA have constructed, distilled into three key points:
First, that the Canadian recording industry has sustained significant financial losses in recent years due to decreased music sales. Second, that those losses can be attributed to peer–to–peer file sharing. Third, that the losses have materially harmed Canadian artists.
The time has come to acknowledge that each of these pillars is a myth.
The paper is quite thorough, but the gist of it is that industry’s complaints of financial devastation come not from illegal music downloading, but rather from “exaggerated” reactionary claims which conveniently ignore the measurable growth of DVD sales, the rise of alternate forms of entertainment (e.g., cellphones, videogames), and, most interestingly, industry-strangling weeds like Wal–Mart, which caps retail pricing in the United States at US$9.72 per CD.
All signs point to P2P being a convenient scapegoat for the music industry’s financial downturn. How else to explain, for example, the 11% falloff in CD sales during the 1991 economic recession–a sharper drop than the most recent downturn? Nice try, RIAA.
