The music and movie industries have been making some enormous mistakes lately in their quest to rid the world of piracy (which will never happen, by the way). Each and every one of these mistakes can be lessons for everyone:
Don’t Go After Someone Without Multiple Tiers Of Proof
Whenever you are even going to file a DMCA notice (which is a legal document, and you can get in huge trouble for faking it), you should have multiple tiers of evidence against the other party.
At the bottom of the list should be your weak evidence, like a copy of the Google Cache for the page, and at the top should be concrete evidence like a copy of the page itself, with your stolen work still on it. I actually have a folder on my computer called “Legal Issues” where I store copies of the Google Cache (if my work is on it) and a copy of the page as well as a link to the website in their own individual folders, and any other documents like the DMCA itself and maybe a Google Adsense DMCA. Oh, and lets not forget I also take screenshots. It helps me keep everything organized, just in case the worst should ever happen.
The RIAA and MPAA made the mistake of relying on IP addresses alone, which are a very weak form of evidence. They can be faked, go quickly out of date, and multiple people may be using the same IP. Think of the lawsuits they are losing against colleges, it is because they have absolutely no way of proving who stole music, nor do they have any proof they actually stole it (it is pretty easy to securely erase a file off an HD).
Don’t Become Distracted By The Little Things
The RIAA and MPAA are so concerned with going after the Mother who has 5 illegal songs or the Son who downloaded that new album, that they forget who the real threat is - the people uploading the content. It is the people who upload songs and movies who are causing the most damage. Sure, it is illegal to download the stuff, but it is much more illegal to upload the thing 5,000 times.
Let me ask you this question: If two sploggers steal your content and both file counter claims against your DMCA takedown, who would you sue first, the splogger who makes $10,000/month via adsense and such, or the splogger who has no ads on their splog? There is a concept called prioritization. If you can, go after the biggest threat first, then work your way down.
Don’t Lie About Sales
For the past few years music sales have gone down. Do you know why? I sure as heck do - modern music sucks. Plain and simple, it sucks.
It really is no surprise that music sales are going down when 40% of songs are “F this” “Bang my hooker” and “kill that b” and another 40% of songs are purely sexual nonsense (thank you Britney Spears).
The RIAA makes it look like sales are only going down because of piracy. While I agree it can and does affect sales, I think it plays a much smaller role than they make it seem.
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July 24th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
I would like to second the extreme suckage of most modern-day music. Listening to the radio grows more and more painful by the day. I don’t want to hear about how much money you have in the bank, how many diamonds are in your grille, or how many big booty ho’s you smacked. Especially when the themes and lyrics are repeated over and over again across the board. At least in the rap genre, that is. Old rap & old rock are the best.
July 24th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
I will refrain from passing judgment on todays music, to each their own, however I have to agree that the real threat is the up loaders not the down loaders. People can not download what is not there. The MPAA has even released movies as torrents and track who downloads those torrents so they can prosecute, can anyone say entrapment?
July 24th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Yeah, catching the guys in the act of downloading would be nice if it worked as well as it does for say pedophilia.