Thursday 25 June 2009

The Role Played By RIAA In Music Downloads.

By Susan Reynolds

RIAA is an abbreviation of Recording Industry Association of America. This association is a conglomerate of many large companies who cater to the recoding and music distribution all over the United States of America. It is estimated that more than 90% of the music recording ompanies and distributors are part of the conglomerate called RIAA. In the days of 1950's RIAA was primarily into the maintaining the quality of music. Today RIAA is mainly focused on into protection of copyright.

The change in priorities has taken place because of frequent unauthorized and illegal copy or download of music that has copy right restriction to it. The movement is presently conducted under Mitch Bainwol. In the 1990's Napster which was an an online music file sharing service was accessible and people downloaded any kind of music from it without any cost. They would freely download, burn and share music with friends. With the advance of computer technology the issue of copyright protection became more and more sharp.

RIAA is rigorously against P2P music sharing. It took initiative in the year 2000 to restrict the P2P trading of music. However after showing significant decrease it continues to exist today also. RIAA has not relented in its war against P2P sharing. It is not only the traders but down unto the individual level that prohibition against P2P music sharing exists.

Though RIAA is doing all in its power to protect misuse of music protected by copyright but the activities in this direction by RIAA are not welcome by everyone. Those opposing have brought out that number of CD's sold was more when online services such as Napster were available. Doubts have therefore been expressed about the stated aims of RIAA to help the artists and recording studios. RIAA has also been blamed for putting the artists to a loss who are paid very less payment for sale of CDs while they themselves make big gains.

RIAA has also been blamed by opponents for its lawsuits against blameless people. Lawsuit filed against a kid of age about 12, an aged woman nearly 83 years in age and one against a woman in her 60's who could hardly use computer have been cited as example of high handedness. Credibility of RIAA has suffered big erosion on account of such actions.

RIAA approves of latest tools and technologies which are emerging in the market and which may help in promotion of piracy of music. The organization is of the opinion that it is the people who should be blamed for misusing technology instead of other way round.

Generally people are unsure of their feelings towards RIAA. Some are opposed to its actions and criticize it on many scores, but on the other hand there are many who welcome its efforts. In spite of a lack of consistent view about it amongst people in general it has to be accepted that in the last few years it has made remarkable progress.

Another area of activity by RIAA apart from copyright protection, is keeping track of sale of records. It also awards "Gold" or "Platinum" labels depending on the number of CDs sold. It may be summarized in the end that existence of RIAA has contributed much to keeping the business of music industry good and clean.

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