Good job RIAA on winning a $1.9 million verdict against a single mother

Jun 21 2009

Way to go RIAA! You just won a court case against a single mother for 24 stinking songs. You not only ruined this woman’s life (unless a higher appeals court finds some common sense and overturns the $1.9 million dollar judgement), but you also have managed to pull of the world’s worst PR campaign – sue the hell out of people, with sketchy evidence, for sharing a few songs online.

Of course, I’m referring to the verdict against 32-year old Jammie Thomas-Rasset, who was ‘convicted’ of uploading 24 songs to a popular file sharing website.

I try not to stray too far from books, writing and literature on this blog. But there are implications for the growing ebook industry in this case, and I hope publishers are paying attention.

Instead of trying to re-hash everything about the case, here’s a quote from this article on the Bloomberg website:

A federal jury in Minneapolis said Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 32, of Brainerd, Minnesota, should pay $80,000 for each of the 24 songs that were posted on the site so others could download them, including “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls and “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns ‘n Roses. The first time the case went to trial, in 2007, a jury awarded $9,250 per song, or $222,000.

$80,000 per song? That seems fair. Seriously though, this case should be sending a major signal to lawmakers in Washington that copyright laws, especially those pertaining to digital content, need to be re-written. The punishment is nowhere near being proportional to the crime. This posting on Ars Technica gives an example about Sony BMG getting a mere slap on the wrist for something even more servere than sharing a few songs:

“When Sony BMG massively and illegally distributed music CDs containing spyware that compromised individual users’ computer security and infected government and military networks worldwide, the FTC only ordered them in 2007 to reimburse end-users up to $150 for computer damages. Yet when Ms. Thomas shared 24 songs belonging to Sony BMG and other labels on the Internet, she was penalized $80,000 for each single track.”

This only goes to reaffirm the popular myth that in the US, only those with lots of money can get ‘justice’.

A warning to book publishers

So far the book publishing industry has managed to avoid some of the major mistakes that the music industry has made. For one, publishers aren’t on a massive witch hunt to sue their own customers. But publishers are also realizing that people want to read ebooks, and if the publishers don’t provide them to the readers legally, then pirates will do it illegally.

Look what happened to the music industry when they resisted selling digital music online and kept trying to force CDs down the throats of their customers:

At its peak in 1999, the industry brought in $14.6 billion in sales; last year that number had fallen to $8.5 billion. The RIAA claims the primary reason for the drop was because of online music theft as well as traditional piracy in the form of bootlegged CDs.

So instead of phasing out, or at least cutting back, on CD production and figuring out a new business model that includes digital music, the music industry kept on pushing CDs and then started this fiasco of going after average Americans with these ridiculous lawsuits.

As for book publishers, I see signs that they have learned from the music industry. However, the one area I see trouble for ebooks is in the pricing. Many publishers are very content to price ebooks the same way they price print books. Bad idea. If you keep ebook prices too high, you will have the same problems with piracy.

And here’s why: Digital content is different than printed books and/or CDs!!! The economics of digital content is different. Why? Because when you distribute an ebook online, you have infinite supply. No warehouse is going to run out of books. You can sell a million copies of the same book without having to do multiple printing runs, storage, delieveries, etc. It doesn’t really matter if you think ebooks should be priced the same as print books – your customer base expects ebook prices to be a lot lower.

</rant>

Do you think justice was served in the case of Jammie Thomas-Rassat? Leave a comment below with your thoughts, even if you disagree with me, I still want to hear from you!

Read More: Technology, The Interwebs, eBooks

2 Responses

I read this on another blog, but I think it sums up the problems facing the content industries: provide your content in the way your users want, at a price your users are willing to pay, or else you FAIL.

The problem with the recording industry is that at the beginning of MP3s, they weren’t willing to provide their content in the way their users wanted (in MP3 format) at a price they’re willing to pay ($.99/song or less). So people had to turn to piracy to get what they wanted, which persisted even after the record labels woke up and started doing digital downloads.

I am hopeful that the publishing industry has learned from the recording industry’s mistakes. But with the Kindle text-to-speech debacle showing that people still don’t understand technology, I’m thinking they haven’t totally learned yet.

Susan 6/22/2009 7:19 am
Loved to read your blog. I would like to suggest you that traffic show most people read blogs on Mondays. So it should encourage bloggers to write new write ups over the weekend primarily.
regards
lodaz

Terry S 6/30/2009 1:13 pm