Turn 'Kazaa Kids' into paying customers and ...

BMG Germany's Dr Martin Schäfer and Fraunhofer Group's professor Karl-Heinz Brandenburg have fascinating insights on how the music industry can handle file sharing, and at the same time turn 'Kazaa's Kids' into good, paying customers.

In an August 18 story called Capturing Kazaa's Kids as Customers, "To kill two birds with one stone [... severely dent the power of the pirates and return the industry to profitability ...] the record labels must embrace the generation that threatens them and give it what it wants," says Germany's Deutsche Welle.

"Instead of a prolonged and ultimately losing war, the music industry must face up to the fact that it's more a case of 'if you can't beat them, join them - but make them pay for it'."

So how do you make them join? And how do you make them pay?

Quoted in the Deutsche Welle items, Schäfer says, "Providers such as AOL and T-Online should co-operate with only trustworthy partners and not allow their services to be hijacked by the pirates. By blocking certain addresses and preventing users from reaching these sites, we could provide a virtual shopping mall where only legal sharing takes place."

He went on, "The Internet will remain unaffected. It would just be a contract between two businesses - the Internet provider and the legal sharing portal. This would create a security wall within the Internet. Why should a company want their product out there in the illegal domain? An agreement between trustworthy partners would force those who want illegal music to change Internet providers, someone less reputable ... they aren't going to do that."

'Legal sharing portal,' huh?

Brandenburg, "a pioneer in MP3 technology with the Fraunhofer Group for Electronic and Media Technology," thinks the Internet itself, 'must be controlled as one part of the on-going struggle and that, in principle, improved legal services would tempt users away from bootlegging but believes that the ethical questions must also be addressed.

"We are dealing with a generation of kids with no conscience," he apparently said, kids, "who don’t believe they are doing anything wrong. There is a huge question of legality here. There should be clear definitions about what is unacceptable and it should be clear to people that if they do these things, they will be punished."

He adds that improved security and service could combine to, "move the industry closer to controlling Internet piracy and closer to turning Kazaa’s kids into customers".