RIAA paid its lawyers more than $16,000,000 in 2008 to recover only $391,000

Dumpy Dooby

Veteran X
The RIAA's "business plan" is even worse than I'd guessed it was.

The RIAA paid Holmes Roberts & Owen $9,364,901 in 2008, Jenner & Block more than $7,000,000, and Cravath Swain & Moore $1.25 million, to pursue its "copyright infringement" claims, in order to recover a mere $391,000. [ps there were many other law firms feeding at the trough too; these were just the ones listed among the top 5 independent contractors.]

Embarrassing.

If the average settlement were $3,900, that would mean 100 settlements for the entire year.

As bad as it was, I guess it was better than the numbers for 2007, in which more than $21 million was spent on legal fees, and $3.5 million on "investigative operations" ... presumably MediaSentry. And the amount recovered was $515,929.

And 2006 was similar: they spent more than $19,000,000 in legal fees and more than $3,600,000 in "investigative operations" expenses to recover $455,000.

So all in all, for a 3 year period, they spent around $64,000,000 in legal and investigative expenses to recover around $1,361,000.

Shrewd.

No wonder they get paid the big bucks


Source: recordingindustryvspeople



I wonder how much they claim is lost to piracy every year.
 
The US Government should help them to cover the difference because it should help it's countries businesses protect it's intellectual properties.
 
i'm pretty sure a lot of people buy their music of the internet. this wasn't always the case, the threat of legal action made a lot of people think twice
 
if these lawyers are on retainer, then the RIAA is paying them that much no matter what they do. In which case, they just made $391,000
 
l_af3e748137864254bea0c6e141e858b5.gif
 
i'm pretty sure a lot of people buy their music of the internet. this wasn't always the case, the threat of legal action made a lot of people think twice
This has less to do with scaring people (I'm sure everyone was aware of the statistic, "you're more likely to get struck by lightning twice than you are to get sued for downloading RIAA music") and more to do with availability and marketing.

In other words, piracy molded the industry and forced it into Internet distribution. (see: Warehouse, Sam Goody, etc all dide and were replaced by iTunes et al)


I'm even willing to venture a guess that the industry didn't hinder piracy at all.
 
in honor of this thread, i'm going down to my B&M music shop to buy some CDs today.

Thanks teedub!
 
Back
Top