RIAA Justifies Spending Millions to Collect Thousands
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RIAA Justifies Spending Millions to Collect Thousands
The Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) insists that tax returns make a wrong and misleading conclusion on its strategy of “suing-them-all,” as its major intent of defending the rights of musicians and making people to acquire the content legally is very successful.
Couple of weeks ago it was revealed that the industry has been spending millions of dollars every year to target file-sharers, while the fines they manage to recoup rarely exceed 2% of the total expenses.
The statistics say that the entertainment industry spent about $20 million annually recouping $400,000, and these are only figures from 2006 to 2008, so it’s unknown how much it spent in the previous decade, within the heydays of peer-to-peer networks.
After the public became aware of the figures and couldn’t praise the RIAA for spending so much money to gain so little success (considering that sales of legal content are still declining and peer-to-peer is still rampant), the Record Industry Association of America understood it’s time to defend the expenses.
The outfit argues that the figures revealed are misleading, because the cost of legal fees covers a wide range of costs, such as royalty litigation, DMCA warnings, and lawsuits against unauthorized file-sharing services. Moreover, very often the legal fees span over years, with any resulting victory being calculated later on.
The RIAA explains that drawing any larger conclusions about the efficiency of its anti-piracy attempts would be inaccurate and misleading if based on the single line in its tax documents. Their main goal is not to earn money for the rights owners, but to foster a respect for them and to increase awareness, forcing fans to buy the content legally. Looking from this point, the RIAA thinks its efforts make a real difference.
This explanation sounds rather reasonable, but the RIAA’s expenditures are still very high compared to the amount it recoups, and that is the reason why critics say the astronomically high penalties the industry usually seeks in the legal battle have nothing to do with real damages, but are rather targeted at sending a message to similar infringers.
The only conclusion both the industry and the file-sharers can draw out of this is that the RIAA spends too much on legal fees while recouping so little because it just scares tactics.
