Unfortunately, they are not seeing much of a return on that investment.
In 2008, the RIAA paid its lawyers over $16 million to pursue copyright infringement claims. Total recovery for these claims amounted to $390,000.
Ouch.
As if that wasn't bad enough, these numbers are pretty consistent with those from 2007 ($21 million spent to recover $515,929) or 2006 ($19 million spent to recover $455,000). That means for each of these years, the RIAA recovered about 2.4% of the money it spent on legal fees. If you factor in the several millions spent on investigative operation--hiring Peer Media Technologies--the percentage gets even lower. You'd think they'd have figured out this wasn't working so well after the first year.
This situation is rather amusing, but ultimately it's more infuriating and upsetting than anything else.
In a time of industry-wide panic about eroding profits, where people are rapidly losing their jobs, an organization that's supposed to have the music business's best interests in mind keeps burning through money on lawyers and has nothing to show for it.
Couldn't the RIAA have invested those millions in research on how to realign the music industry, rather than lining high-powered lawyers' pockets with it?
Furthermore, there is clearly something wrong with the intellectual property system in the United States if the organization responsible for the collection and distribution of music needs to spend this kind of money to meet its obligations to the people it represents.
