Shutting Down FileSharing Sites And P2P Services Pays Off, Says RIAA

June 10, 2012 by
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Entertainment Industry, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services, Legal P2P News & Issues 

Two days ago a House Commerce Committee hearing on “The Future of Audio” was held. Here, the Recording Industry Association of America, represented by its chairman and CEO Cary Sherman, has told lawmakers how the music industry has “transformed how it does business”.

At this hearing the RIAA claimed that digital formats are now responsible for more than half of the industry’s revenues. Sherman also pointed out that CDs are becoming obsolete, being replaced by digital music which has brought around $3.5 billion in revenues a year ago, nearly 20 times more compared to 2004.

Fact is that digital music was on the tide since peer-to-peer services emerged, such as Napster, KaZaa and Limewire, all facilitating the free exchange of digital content. Now it seems that the music industry started adapting to the digital era.

Cary Sherman also said that Limewire’s “demise” had a positive effect on music sales:

”For example, most people are familiar with Limewire, which was the world’s most popular peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing service. Between 2007 and 2010, about 2/3 of filesharers on the Internet used the service”, she said. ” At the end of October 2010, a federal court finally shut them down for inducing massive copyright infringement,” he said.

“The very next month, digital sales of music improved and they’ve remained higher ever since. While this may not be the sole cause, it is not a coincidence, just a couple of months ago, market research firm NPD released a survey showing that more than half of the people who had used Limewire did NOT go to another illegal music site to get their music after the shutdown, thanks to the availability of legal music download services.”

“We continue to believe that the best and single most important anti-piracy strategy remains innovation — experimenting and working with our technology and Internet partners on consumer-friendly new business models,” RIAA’s CEO concluded.

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