Reuters
Lawsuit threats curb online music piracy - study
Thursday August 21, 3:39 pm ET
LOS ANGELES, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Music piracy over the Internet has declined since the record industry started threatening to sue individual users of popular but unauthorized file-sharing networks, a market research group said on Thursday.
According to Port Washington, New York-based NPD Group, the number of households acquiring music files began to fall in May 2003, immediately after the Recording Industry Association of America (News - Websites) (RIAA) launched a well-publicized campaign threatening individual file-sharers with legal action.
NPD said it based its findings on information collected continuously from the PCs of 40,000 NPD online panelists.
Based on this information, it projects that music files acquired, which includes songs either swapped illegally, obtained through paid downloading sites or ripped from CDs, dropped to 655 million files in June from a high of 852 million files in April.
NPD said it estimated the number of households acquiring music files reached a high of 14.5 million in April 2003, then fell to 12.7 million in May and to 10.4 million in June.
"Today, file-sharing is the most popular method of digital music acquisition," said Russ Crupnick, vice president of the NPD Group. "While we can't say categorically that the RIAA's legal efforts are the sole cause for the reduction in file acquisition, it appears to be more than just a natural seasonal decline," he said.
On April 24, the RIAA announced a recent legal decision that made it clear that individuals cannot rely on their Internet service providers to shield them from accountability for illegal file sharing.
On April 29, the group began sending out hundreds of thousands of instant messages to song-swappers warning they could be "easily" identified and face "legal penalties."
In late June 25, the RIAA said it would track down the heaviest users of "peer-to-peer" services like Kazaa and sue them for damages of up to $150,000 per copyright violation.
The group, which represents the world's major record labels include AOL Time Warner's (NYSE:AOL - News) Warner Music, Bertelsmann AG's BMG, EMI Group Plc (London:EMI.L - News), Sony Corp. (Tokyo:6758.T - News) Sony Music and Vivendi Universal's (NYSE:V - News; Paris:EAUG.PA - News) Universal Music Group, has subsequently sent out more than a thousand subpoenas to individual file-sharers.
NPD said it suspects the fear of legal action has led many consumers to curtail peer-to-peer file sharing.
But among those consumers who continue to download files, the group noted, the average number of music files acquired actually increased to 63 in June from 59 in April.
"Our data suggests the RIAA's legal tactics have more of an effect on the attitudes and actions of lighter downloaders," Crupnick said.
Internet audience measurement service Nielsen NetRatings similarly reported in July that the threat of lawsuits had caused a dip in people using online file-sharing applications to swap songs.
AI
