RIAA use charity album in piracy battle

An angry RIAA post wails that unlicensed music sharers are stealing bread from the victims of the Haiti earthquake:

On the heels of the encouraging news high that the “Hope for Haiti Now” charity album became the first all-digital record to top Billboard’s 200 music sales chart, we’ve also learned that there is a group of P2P users who are uploading and downloading the charity album illegally.

As the “Reaching new lows – charity album piracy” post on James Gannon’s IP, Innovation and Culture blog notes, the album is now widely available on illicit BitTorrent sites like The Pirate Bay, Torrentz and more. The posting highlights a truly ugly side of P2P piracy – the undermining of humanitarian fundraising efforts via online theft of the “Hope for Haiti Now” compilation. So much for the notion that illegal downloading (“sharing”) is an effort to help advance the plight of artists.

That last sentence doesn't actually make sense, does it?

It's possible that people are downloading the album and sending the money straight to charity. Unlikely, but possible.

But hang on a moment... are the RIAA even right about this? Music Ally holds the claims up to the light:

I wondered just how popular the album is on file-sharing networks. It might be available, but how many people are downloading it? So I asked someone best placed to answer that question – Eric Garland of BigChampagne, which tracks activity on these networks.

“Yes, the charity record is available online, on torrent sites and one-click hosting etc, but the interest/volume is relatively low – nothing like a big pop record,” he says. And he pulled out some stats to show the comparative downloads of Hope For Haiti Now and Lady Gaga’s The Fame Monster to show it.

At its peak on 24th January, Hope For Haiti Now was being downloaded 2,680 times a day according to BigChampagne – compare that to The Fame Monster’s 63,845 downloads the same day. Meanwhile, by 23rd February, Hope For Haiti Now’s daily downloads had dwindled to 820, compared to 47,971 for the Gaga album.

So there are a few people helping themselves - presumably the sort of people who wouldn't have bought the album even if it hadn't been available free - but most people are leaving it untouched on the networks.

The evidence, then, suggests that people who use unlicensed files are quite decent in their behaviour when it comes to a charity album. Certainly no worse than a music industry cartel using half-truths and crocodile tears about a charity album to try and advance their political position.