Does the RIAA Know When It's Been Beat?

The poor recording industry can't seem to cut a break. I'd even feel bad for it, if it wasn’t so moronic about piracy. Despite research continuing to suggest there's little if any connection between issuing DMCA takedown notices under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and combating piracy, the number of takedowns being issued by rights-holders is skyrocketing. In the six months after Google started publically tracking DMCA takedown requests, the number rose from 1.2 million to more than 12 million per month. It's now over 16 million per month, according to Google's transparency report.

It's the definition of insanity: doing the same thing again and again expecting different results. The RIAA expressed their frustration with the futile effort in a blog post last week:

A year ago, the RIAA intensified its efforts to remove links to illegal music files from search engine results with the hope of better protecting our members’ music. This week, the number of these search returns to illegal music files removed by Google alone reached 20 million. Yes, you read that right: 20 million. And nearly the same number was sent to the underlying sites offering the content as well. Every day produces more results and there is no end in sight.

Google, meanwhile, has been making an effort to play nice with rights-holders. Last August it tweaked its search algorithm to give preference to legal sites, though six months later the RIAA fired back, claiming the change didn’t make a lick of difference. It issued a report stating the infringing sites "were not demoted in any significant way in the search results, and still managed to appear on page 1 of the search results over 98% of the time in the searches conducted."

More recently, the search company loosened the restriction on the number of links rights-holders can submit per day, catapulting the number of removals to a record high.

When George Washington signed the first U.S. copyright law 223 years ago yesterday, the entire law was just 700 words. Now, the DMCA is 35 pages full of copyright rules—and it's broken as hell. Congress is finally considering an overhaul of the outdated law, which the exhausted recording industry hopes will give it a little relief.  "As the Congressional review of the DMCA gets underway, there should be a strong focus on what notice and takedown was supposed to accomplish," the RIAA wrote.

You mean like actually preventing piracy?