RIAA's Copyright Lawsuit Budget Drastically Reduced
The music industry may be losing its interest in suing people for illegally downloading music.
Payments made to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) amounted to almost $50 million in 2008. Two years later in 2010, it was only $28 million.
The numbers, published in the most recent tax returns, reveals that RIAA has been paying far less to law firms. Attorneys received $16.5 million in 2008, but only $2.4 million in 2010. According to heise.de, the practice of Holme, Robert and Owen was hit especially hard with payments declining from $9.4 million to just $788,000. The 113-year old law firm, which employs 50 lawyers, was recently forced to merge with another firm to contain costs.
RIAA's expenses for lobbying decreased from $6.8 million to $6.3 million from 2008 to 2010. The staff was reduced from 117 to 72 employees and cost for its employees was reduced from $9 million to about $6 million. However, nine second level executives received a salary increase to a total of $4.2 million, even if they are now required to work 50 hours per week, instead of just 40. Former CEO Mitch Bainwol received a salary of $1.9 million, down from $2.0 million.
He may have to resort to downloading his music illegally with that big of a pay cut...
While people lose there jobs the CEO had to take a 100k dollar pay cut omg how will he continue to live off such meager wages.
I bet half the people working for the RIAA doing grunt work (not lawyers and the such) are doing it because there just arnt any jobs around right now. Any grown up will tell you might hate your job you might loath your job but if it feeds the wife in kids then u gotta do it.
While people lose there jobs the CEO had to take a 100k dollar pay cut omg how will he continue to live off such meager wages.
I bet half the people working for the RIAA doing grunt work (not lawyers and the such) are doing it because there just arnt any jobs around right now. Any grown up will tell you might hate your job you might loath your job but if it feeds the wife in kids then u gotta do it.
He may have to resort to downloading his music illegally with that big of a pay cut...
So he got a 100k/yr cut and he quit the company. Nice move, I mean how can you live with just $1.9mil/yr right?
These would be the only people I will be happy to lose their jobs. Not being mean or anything, but that might actually give them a chance to pick up something decent for a living.
LOL!!
I mean, all that money put into emerging bands as a campaign and/or concerts money could have a big ROI and such. Even more, investing that in educative campaigns might even pay more in the long run.
Hope people in the big suing corporations could understand that /sigh
Cheers!
@Toms....can you give HotRoderx 2 thumbs up to make up for my misclick? Wasn't paying attention and clicked the wrong (thumbs down) button. Was supposed to be a thumbs up.
@HotRoderx, sorry man I didn't mean to click thumbs down on you. Hopefully they'll be nice and fix it.
Man, every corporation is *that* dirty, not just the RIAA.
It's okay, CEOs are making the sacrifice of getting an absurd salary for you own good. You work harder for it, because one day it might be you too. *facepalm*
See the ridiculous reasoning behind the justification of America's gross income inequity here:
http://positivesharing.com/2006/08/overpaid-executives/
It's nice to have a Law Firm Name associated with the RIAA lawsuits. Now we know can at least boycott their practice.
Props to the RIAA for defending the artists against low life thieves. Thieves take money from the artists that earned it.
If you like it, BUY IT! Support the artists / developers / etc. who do this for a living. Don't support thieves that steal.
I hope Anon does more then that.
9 years, probably 16-18 $18 dollar sales per year..
Fgiures the Apple drone would call this stealing.
Here's a clue for you, it's copyright infringement.
Screw the lawyers. It's not like the artists saw any of the money they managed to extort anyway.
i agree, but i also believe stealing isnt the same as pirateing.
you steal from a store, sure, get the book thrown at you
you pirate, a far lesser punishment should be found.
and lets go on with riaa protecting artists.
remember the megaupload song and video, the artists made it themselves with megaupload, and the riaa/music groups took it down, something they dont own.
the riaa and mpaa both dont protect the artist, they protect the interest of the big boys, and the big boys dont want change, they want all the little bands under their thumbs, giving them just enough of a carrot to not give up, and the only time they work for the better of the band, is when they get big enough to get out of the media groups control.
please do yourself a favor and open your eyes and tell me there aren't alternative solutions to these problems.
remember cassets,
remember vhs
remember cds
remember dvds
these people tried to kill cassets because they put them in financial ruin (they really did try to claim this) because of radio recording and mix tapes.
they tried to kill vhs, and if that didnt work they wanted to put coin slots into the vhs so you had to pay to watch anything, and they are quoted as "it is not right that you buy jaws once and watch 1000 times, you should have to pay each time you watch it"
they tried to get a tax on every dvdr and cdr, allong with vhs and cassets because "piracy will kill them"
these people are evil who want to keep technology held back so they never have to evolve
im not defending piracy with this, im just saying they arent good people either and are evil and corrupt to the core.
Supporting artists is one thing, but greedy movie and music companies are other story.
How would you like if you need to buy car 5 times, one to use in your home city, another one if you want to go outside city, another one for highways and another one to be permitted to another state , etc?
Thats exactly what they try to make you, buy each Audio/Video title several times to be able use it in your DVD, play on your PC, your mp3 player etc. When you pay for something you should be able use it any way you want. This and reasonable pricing is only thing that would decrease piracy.