The Decision Strategist

Most of you know by now that the RIAA just won a $220,000 settlement against Jammie Thomas for sharing a slew (thousands?) of music over the Kazaa network. This is (I think) the largest settlement to date and one of the first against someone accused of sharing music instead of just downloading it.

At this point technology and the music market have essentially aligned the RIAA against consumers. I say consumers here because an overwhelming number of people download music. And though the RIAA is winning cases, there are also important precedents being set in cases that it is losing.

RIAA Strategy

The RIAA’s motivation is several years of declining record sales. A problem it views as almost solely caused by the availability of music online (pdf link), but which many people argue is due more to releasing bad music(pdf link). Sales have been declining since at least 2001, but part of me can’t help but wonder if it isn’t because of the record-breaking sales of pop artists in the late 1990’s and 2000. If all industries experience bubbles, maybe that was the big music industry bubble. I’ve been trying to find a good data source on record sales but have yet to do so, if you know of one, let me know.

The RIAA’s response has been to use a carrot and stick method, heavy on the stick, to try and change downloading behavior. On the stick side, the main strategies have been:

• Spread FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) using a combination of high profile lawsuits and advertising.
• Attempt to develop sympathy with the public for people working in the music industry, particularly artists who they portray as being cheated out of their money.
• As a last resort, allowing for restricted legal downloading through a variety of services including itunes, rhapsody and others. By the way, a non-sponsered plug for emusic, which features a variety of unDRM’d music. You can also now download music from Amazon with no restrictions.

Downloader Strategy

There has emerged a coherent organized resistane among music downloaders, but several different strategies seem to be shared by most proponents of downloading music. Among them,

• Disputing the assumptions put for the by the RIAA, namely that downloading music,
  • leads to less sales or
  • hurts the artists.
• Developing or co-opting anonymous ways of downloading content such as using tor or free wifi spots.

Among the arguments used to counter the RIAA’s statements are that the artists see a tiny percentage of each record sale, that most downloaded songs wouldn’t be purchased if buying was the only option, and that record sale declines are a result of the poor quality of music rather than it’s availability for free online.

Why the RIAA Cannot Possibly Win

Notice any similarities to the US in Iraq, the War on Drugs, prohibition, or any other enforcement of an unpopular law on a population? Unpopular occupations or laws cannot hope to achieve their agenda by increasing costs of disobeying. You simply cannot criminalize a majority of the population.

During prohibition crime rates increased drastically. The drug war has had a similar effect with the result being the extreme cost to the public for hosting people arrested for possession of marijuana.

The pattern is familiar enough that we should be able to map it out fairly easily:

1. An unpopular law or occupation takes effect.
2. Initial resistance is met with increased penalties.
3. Resistance is driven further underground, but due to it’s popularity it still extracts a heavy costs on the oppressor (which may be it’s own government or corporate organizations).
4. Eventually the cost becomes too great, and the occupier leaves or the law is repealed.

That said, I know there are some examples of foreign powers (often the U.S.) overriding popular will to instill a benevolent dictator. However, these cases are different in at least two ways:

1. The local power base was co-opted. It is absolutely necessary that a powerful segment of the population is allied with the occupying force to help enforce the occupying agenda. This was specifically rejected early in the Iraq War, with the result that local power bases resisted U.S. efforts.
2. A segment of the resisting population fractures and begins turning resisters in to the authority.

To the music industry, neither of these options is currently available. The distribution of music over p2p is by design decentralized, and so there is no local power base to co-opt. The closest might be bands themselves, and Metallica for example has done just that. But more and more you have bands rejecting the music industry entirely, including big names like Prince, Radiohead, and others.

A scary possibility, and one the RIAA has no doubt considered, is developing a core group of sympathizers who could turn in their friends for downloading music. For this to happen though, the music downloading issue needs to be reframed as a moral issue in which the RIAA is a victim. The RIAA knows that it will never be seen as the victim, and so instead has tried to shift it to portraying artists themselves as the victim.

But in a world where music superstars are glamorized and idolized, there are precious few tangible pains to be seen.

Until the RIAA can shift public perception so that downloading music is seen as a moral violation similar to being a Jew in Nazi Germany or being against the state in mother Russia, this is not likely to happen.

As always, I’ll post responses in an article next Sunday.

-zot.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 7th, 2007 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Consumerism, Decision Making, Economics, Technology.