For the music industry, 2003 was a year of many milestones. On one hand, Metallica's 1993 video for "Binge and Purge" was certified 15 times Platinum, making it the highest certified music video in history. On the other hand, a 12-year-old girl, Brianna LaHara, joined 260 other people who were sued for downloading copyrighted music from an Internet service; LaHara became the first to resolve the litigation, settling for $2,000.
What's the connection between these two landmarks? The group that handed out the award to the metal veterans was the same one that sued the preteen. It's all part of the often controversial saga of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the trade group that tirelessly promotes the music industry and ruthlessly polices music piracy.
As a trade association, the RIAA looks after the interests of the three big record labels, Sony, Universal and Warner, and of hundreds of smaller labels and distributors. Its members issue more than 85 percent of the music that is legally sold [source: RIAA]. RIAA activities on behalf of the music industry include the following:
The RIAA got its start in 1952 and made a splash in 1958 when it awarded its first Gold record [source: RIAA]. Since then, the music industry has had to navigate a long stretch of white water as recording technology has changed and changed again. After all, nobody today listens to music the way folks did in the 1950s. From legal digital downloads to music piracy, the association has its work cut out for it as the industry continues to reinvent itself.
The RIAA and the Changing Music Industry
It wasn't all that long ago that listening to music meant buying a vinyl recording, laying it on a spinning turntable and dropping a needle into its grooves. Then came compact discs, first available in 1982, which used a digital, not analog, method of recording and reproducing sound [source: Beschizza]. Having music in a digital format made it easy to create a perfect -- and perfectly free -- copy of a recording, with no loss of quality. The RIAA saw that counterfeit CDs could carve a big hole in members' profits.
Then, iTunes and other online music stores came along. Downloads rapidly began to compete with physical recordings in terms of sales. In 2010, as many digital downloads were sold as physical recordings [source: RIAA]. Today, more than 11 million licensed digital recordings can be had at the click of a mouse button. What's more, a single hit can generate everything from DVDs to mobile downloads to ringtones.
The RIAA has tried to keep up with all these dizzying changes. They pull together statistics to track sales in the various formats -- including CDs, cassettes and mp3 downloads -- by units and value. For example, in 2011, 1.3 billion digital downloads of singles were sold for $1.5 billion, while 241 million CDs were sold for $3.1 billion [source: RIAA]. The RIAA also conducts special studies about things like the economic impact of the music business, and its databases closely track trends in various genres of music.
As technology has changed, the RIAA has collaborated with other groups to create standards for music recordings, including the following [source: RIAA]:
Another more recent addition to the RIAA to-do list is overseeing streaming music services. Internet services like Pandora and Spotify pass on music to customers in a form that they can listen to but not copy. These companies pay a royalty for every song they use. Radio stations of course offer a similar service, but pay a much lower royalty. It's up to the RIAA to negotiate with the streaming companies and work out a fair level of compensation [source: Sisario].
In addition to these routine matters, the RIAA has had to grapple with one modern-day issue that poses a threat to the very existence of the industry: music piracy.
Vinyl Lives!Sales of vinyl recordings peaked in 1977, then declined through the 1980s and 1990s as CDs took over. But recently, record sales have picked up. Audiophiles love their rich, nuanced sound. In 2011, more than 5 million records were shipped, the highest number in two decades [source: Vinyl and More].
The RIAA and Music Piracy
Burning a CD from your computer is ridiculously easy. It also could be illegal. Digital recording has made counterfeiting and sharing technically simple, but only the owner of the copyright can legally make a copy. Any other copying falls into the sometimes murky territory of music piracy.
As the RIAA readily points out, the penalties for stealing copyrighted material are no joke. Even if you don't pirate copies for commercial purposes, making an unauthorized copy means you could spend five years in the slammer and pay a $250,000 fine. You could also be the target of a civil suit, with penalties starting at $750 per song [source: RIAA].
If that sounds serious, it's because piracy is a life-or-death issue for the record industry. Today, only 37 percent of all music is obtained legally; the rest is stolen. Record companies and artists lose an estimated $12.5 billion a year to copyright theft. Since 1999, music sales have plummeted 53 percent, diving from $14.6 billion in 1999 to $7.0 billion in 2011. From 2004 to 2009, music pirates downloaded something like 30 billion songs illegally, a blow to the industry that has cost 70,000 Americans their jobs. The RIAA compiles statistics like these to emphasize the gravity of the situation [source: RIAA].
And these financial losses hurt more than just the corporations. Musicians, the very folks that fans idolize, lose the income to which their talent entitles them. When record companies are deprived of revenues, they don't have the money to invest in new talent. Performers who might have made it big never get the chance.
Who are the culprits in music piracy? Here are a few of the actions that constitute theft:
Enough people have broken the rules that the RIAA has taken action to protect the industry.
The Sound Tracks of Our LivesPopular culture -- and people's collective consciousness -- is saturated with music. The RIAA cites some statistics to show that music is a huge part of our lives. For example, of the 10 most followed Twitter accounts, seven belong to musicians -- Lady Gaga leads the list with 31 million followers. Of the six most watched YouTube videos of all time, five are music videos [source: RIAA].
How the RIAA Has Fought Piracy
Seeing the piracy problem developing, the RIAA supported the enforcement of the No Electronic Theft (NET) legislation that was passed back in 1997. The law made theft of copyrighted material a crime even if no commercial use was intended. That put music fans on notice, buy many continued to think that sharing music or burning CDs was OK.
Napster, which debuted in 1999, raised the problem to a new level. A so-called peer-to-peer (P2P) service, Napster let users upload and download music, copyright or no copyright. At its peak, Napster gave its 25 million users access to 80 million songs, most of them stolen [source: CNBC]. The RIAA sued in December 1999, and Napster eventually went bankrupt.
But music fans were hooked on free music, and the RIAA found itself in a game of Whac-A-Mole. Napster was followed by similar services: Aimster and AudioGalaxy, then LimeWire, Morpheus, eDonkey and BitTorrent. The RIAA joined in cases against two of these services, Grokster and Streamcast, in 2003. This litigation reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in June 2005 that anyone promoting copyright theft can be held responsible. The RIAA sued Kazaa, another popular P2P network, in 2006. That service no longer exists, but efforts to skirt the law continued. A suit against the file-sharing service LimeWire in 2010 was another RIAA victory.
The RIAA stirred up the music world even more when it began to file other lawsuits against individuals. Starting in 2003, the RIAA sued more than 30,000 people [source: Kravets]. Most, including 12-year-old Brianna LaHara, settled out of court, but had to pay several thousand dollars for uploading or downloading copyrighted music. A few went to trial, lost and were hit with large judgments.
Many of the targets of the suits didn't even know they were breaking the law. Some thought that, by paying a subscription fee to a P2P service, they were legally entitled to use it to share digital tunes. Regardless of whether ignorance of the law was a valid excuse, RIAA officials said they were trying to raise awareness of music piracy and slow the theft of copyrighted material. They pointed out that before the suits began, only 35 percent of people knew that sharing copyrighted music from unauthorized sources was illegal [source: RIAA].
Heated charges were hurled at the RIAA. Was the association unfairly targeting a few uninformed music fans? Were the penalties it sought unjust? One woman was fined $222,000 for uploading songs to the Internet [source: Sandoval]. A single mother faced a $500,000 judgment [source: EFF.org]. In the face of mounting criticism, the RIAA stopped filing most lawsuits against individuals in 2008.
In the past few years, legal music sales have increased and the percentage of users illegally sharing tunes has dropped, but piracy remains a huge problem. It has become even easier to copy music as high-capacity DVD discs, flash drives and external hard drives have made transferring thousands of songs a breeze. Digital storage lockers and anonymous file sharing services have opened new avenues for piracy. However, the RIAA has begun to focus on education rather than litigation to try to stem the tide.