The Electronic Frontier Foundation has again criticised the Recording Industry Association Of America for its unrelenting programme of litigation against individuals who share music via P2P networks which, they claim, has failed to achieve any of its objectives. The EFF, a San Francisco based lobbying organisation that aims to defend the rights of internet users, has, of course, frequently spoken out against the RIAA's lawsuit campaign, and regularly supports those who fight RIAA litigation.
In a new 25 page white paper on the US record industry's approach to tackling the threat of illegal file sharing, the organisation writes: "Four years and more than 20,000 lawsuits later, the RIAA's campaign of suing individual American music fans has failed. It has failed to curtail P2P downloading. It has not persuaded music fans that sharing is equivalent to shoplifting".
The report cites research by the likes of BigChampagne and BayTSP that shows that P2P usage has actually increased despite the record industry's expensive legal programme. In fact according to BigChampagne, they argue, the number of simultaneous users on P2P networks has risen dramatically since 2003, up from 4.3 million users in September 2003 to 9.3 million in recent months.
Like certain other organisations, the EFF advocates an albeit possibly unworkable blanket licensing system where labels allow file sharing in return for a cut of subscription revenues from internet service providers and ad revenues generated by any websites or P2P clients that enable the file sharing.
Given that the EFF has a long history of making similar statements, the RIAA is unlikely to be affected by the latest white paper, despite the BigChampagne stats.