The copyright industry in action

Companies which still pretend they make music or films get really prickly when you suggest they're little more than copyright farms. The figures behind ACS:Law, the 'whoops, there goes all your private data online' legal firm gives some clarity onto how copyright claims are more a nice little earner than anything. From MediaGuardian:

For a typical letter demanding £300 as settlement for the allegation of filesharing, the record company would get between £60 and £90, while ACS:Law would retain £120. The rest would go to pay the companies which find the alleged filesharers, and to pay internet service providers to hand over data.

According to figures leaked online, and information from industry sources, approximately 10% of net revenue that comes from people who pay on receiving the letters is paid to the company that tracks down the IP addresses of suspected illicit filesharers.

A further 15% is paid to the internet service providers for retrieving the data, following a court order, detailing the names and addresses of the people implicated by the IP addresses collected through the tracking software.

I don't think it's any surprise that the pursuit of unlicensed files has become an industry for its own sake, in much the same way that clamping firms have nothing to do with protecting parking spaces and more about shaking the wallets of drivers.

What's missing from this breakdown is any indication of how much goes to the artists in whose name this is supposed to be done. Bugger all, you'd have to suspect.