Recording Industry Association of America

From Free net encyclopedia

(Redirected from RIAA)

Please expand this article.
This template may be found on the article's talk page, where there may be further information. Alternatively, more information might be found at Requests for expansion.
Please remove this message once the article has been expanded.

Template:POV check

Image:Logo2.gif The Recording Industry Association of America (or RIAA) is the trade group that represents the recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of a large number of private corporate entities such as record labels and distributors, rather than the actual artists responsible for the initial generation of the music. Furthermore, there are many claims of this list containing non-members, and even including organizations that oppose the RIAA. [1] [2]. As of this writing, Lookout! Records has been added to the list again, along with Epitaph Records and Fat Wreck Chords, both of which are of questionable veracity.

1 Responsibilities
2 File-sharing controversy
3 Other Lawsuits
4 Work (Made) For Hire controversy
5 CD Ripping controversy
6 Piggybacking on Television Broadcast flag
7 References
8 See also
9 External links

[edit]

Responsibilities

The RIAA was formed in 1952 primarily to administer the RIAA equalization curve. This is a technical standard of frequency response applied to vinyl records during manufacturing and playback. The RIAA has continued to participate in creating and administering technical standards for later systems of music recording and reproduction, including magnetic tape, cassette tapes, digital audio tapes, CDs and software-based digital technologies.

The RIAA also participates in the collection, administration and distribution of music licenses and royalties.

The association is responsible for certifying gold and platinum albums and singles in the USA. For more information about sales data see List of best selling albums and list of best selling singles.

[edit]

File-sharing controversy

The RIAA has been at the heart of the file-sharing controversy, especially music files in the popular MP3 format uploaded onto the Internet using peer-to-peer software. The RIAA has long contended that sharing of copyrighted music was a form of piracy, applying the well-known computing term to music. Hilary Rosen, the RIAA's president and chief executive officer from 1998 to 2003, was an outspoken critic of peer to peer file sharing, and under her direction, the RIAA waged an aggressive legal campaign trying to eliminate illegal file-sharing worldwide. More recent RIAA presidents have also continued the RIAA's stance toward any type of free use. The RIAA and its member groups argue that Internet distribution of music, without the consent of the owner of the copyright in that music, not only detrimentally affected the profits of their members, but the careers of current and future artists as well, due to possible stagnation of the music industry from lack of innovation and production of a quality product.

Critics allege that the RIAA is, in effect, an organized cartel which artificially inflates and fixes the prices for CDs. The allegations note that the Big Four (EMI, Sony-BMG, Universal Music and Warner) distribute over 95 percent of all music CDs sold worldwide, and that the share of the price of an individual CD actually received by the artist is negligibly low compared to the share retained by the record company as profit. In 2003, the major CD issuers in the American market, including the "Big Four" settled a major scale price-fixing case brought by 43 state Attorneys General by issuing refunds to consumers and donating CDs to libraries and educational groups. [3] However, this does not appear to have allayed the concerns of many critics. Additionally, they drew criticism when the CDs they donated to libraries contained many duplicates and albums with explicit lyrics. Despite the inclusion in the settlement of a clause meant to prevent the companies from dumping overstock into the libraries, some librarians still labeled the donations "junk". For instance, excessive copies of Mariah Carey's "Glitter", Will Smith's "Willennium", or "Entertainment Weekly: The Greatest Hits 1971". [4] [5]

The effectiveness of the RIAA's litigation tactics appeared to be in question and its image in the public eye damaged when they sued Brianna Lahara, a 12-year-old honor student from New York City [6]. The image was dealt further damage when they subpoenaed an 83-year-old grandmother, Gertrude Walton. Mrs. Walton stood accused of swapping rock, pop and rap songs. The case was made further absurd due to the fact that Mrs. Walton had died a number of months prior to the case [7]. The RIAA in 2003 attempted to sue Sarah Seabury Ward, a 66 year-old sculptor residing in Boston, MA. They alleged that she shared more than 2,000 songs illegally. The RIAA dropped the suit when it was discovered that she was a computer novice and did not have Kazaa. The case was dismissed, but without prejudice.

In 2005, the RIAA sued Candy Chan of Michigan, for the actions of her daughter, 13 year old Brittany Chan. When the court ruled in favor of the mother, dismissing the case with prejudice, the RIAA proceeded to sue Brittany Chan. The case is pending in federal court.

Recently, Patricia Santangelo has made the news by challenging the RIAA's lawsuit against her. Another defendant, Tanya Andersen, is a 41 year-old disabled single mother living in Oregon.

Some artists openly oppose the RIAA's practice of suing random file-traders and encourage their fans to share their music online.

According to Wired, around 9 million Americans trade on file-sharing networks. [8] To date, the RIAA has sued approximately 16,000 [9] people in the United States suspected of sharing copyrighted works. They have settled approximately 2,500 of the cases. According to Digital Music News, the average number of users online simultaneously has more than doubled since the lawsuits began, from 3.8 million in August of 2003 to 8.9 million in June of 2005.[10]

The RIAA's legal campaign experienced a setback in December of 2003, when a federal appeals court overturned a lower court order requiring Verizon to disclose the identities of file-sharing customers based on a simple one-page subpoena. The RIAA claims this procedure was sanctioned by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but the appeals court ruled that the DMCA regulation applies only to data actually hosted by an Internet service provider, rather than data on a customer's computer. The United States Supreme Court let this ruling stand in 2004. As a result, the RIAA must now file individual civil suits against each accused file-sharer, and the ISP and alleged file sharer have more legal avenues for preventing disclosure of their identity, making the entire process much more expensive, slow and complicated.[11]

Another setback occurred in 2005, when the court dismissed Priority Records v. Chan [12] because it was ruled that the mother could not be sued for the alleged infringements of her 13 year old daughter. [13] Prosecuting a minor is more difficult, and many previous adult defendants have said that the P2P software installation and copyright infringement was done without their knowledge by one of their children.

Recent suits in 2005 have been focused on University and college-aged students, with the purpose stated by the RIAA to deter and discourage unethical habits by youth on the verge of entering the world community. This campaign has generated controversy as well. An April 4th story in the MIT campus newspaper The Tech indicates that an RIAA representative stated to Cassi Hunt that, previously, "the RIAA has been known to suggest that students drop out of college or go to community college in order to be able to afford settlements."<ref>Hunt, Cassi. "Run Over by the RIAA Don...t Tap the Glass." MIT Tech 4 Apr. 2006, V126 ed.: N15. 5 Apr. 2006 <http://www-tech.mit.edu/V126/N15/RIAA1506.html>.</ref>

[edit]

Other Lawsuits

In October 1998, the Recording Industry Association of America, filed a lawsuit in the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco claiming the Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300 player violated the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act. The Rio PMP300 was significant because it was the second portable consumer MP3 digital audio player released on the market. The three judge panel ruled in favor of Diamond, paving the way for the development of the MP3 portable player market. [14]

[edit]

Work (Made) For Hire controversy

In 1999, Stanley M. [aka Mitchell] Glazier, a Congressional staff attorney, inserted, without public notice or comment, substantive language into the final markup of a "technical corrections" section of copyright legislation, classifying many music recordings as "works made for hire," thereby stripping artists of their copyright interests and transferring those interests to their record labels. Shortly afterwards, Glazier was hired as Senior Vice President of Government Relations and Legislative Counsel for the RIAA, which vigorously defended the change when it came to light. The battle over the disputed provision led to the formation of the Recording Artists' Coalition, which successfully lobbied for repeal of the change.

[edit]

CD Ripping controversy

On February 17, 2006, the EFF wrote an article[15] about the RIAA's claim that ripping CDs and backing them up does not constitute fair use, because tracks from ripped CDs do not maintain the controversial DRM to protect the music file from copyright infringement. The RIAA further argued that there is no evidence that any of the relevant media are 'unusually subject to damage in the ordinary course of their use.' This caused controversy for it suggests that people do not need, or have the right to backup anything that does not have a high failure rates. The report went on to say: "Even if CDs do become damaged, replacements are readily available at affordable prices."[16]

[edit]

Piggybacking on Television Broadcast flag

Congress is considering legislation to overturn the DC Circuits reversal of the FCC Broadcast flag rule. The RIAA wants to insert a radio broadcast flag rule to overturn the longstanding rule allowing radio stations to play songs.

[edit]