p2pnet news | P2P:- A combination of TorrentFreak and the Wikipedia provide a fascinating look at one of Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s most prominent consumer attack outfits – IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry).

Says the Wikipedia >>>

IFPI is the International Federation of Phonogram and Videogram Producers. In 1974 IFPI changed the meaning of its name from International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. It was formed with the stated aim of representing the recording industry in negotiations with BIEM (Bureau International de l’Edition Mecanique) for the payment of mechanical royalties to the promote the legal rights of record producers during 1933 in Rome, Italy, under the fascist government of Benito Mussolini [pictured here with his mate, Hitler] by companies mainly owned or controlled by General Electric in the United States of America.

IFPI is known by its use of the word pirate in highly publicized legal attacks upon any person or group who distributes unlicensed material created by a member of IFPI.

Immediately beneath that is the statement, “The neutrality of this article is disputed.”

Wonder who posted that?

Meanwhile, “Any organization reaching a major anniversary would be proud of this fact, with press releases, interviews and celebration,” says TorrentFreak’s enigmax, quoting Copyriot but:

“The IFPI hasn’t said anything about reaching its 75th birthday. Instead, one of their staff has edited their Wikipedia page to keep their roots a secret. So what exactly do they want to hide?”

What indeed?

TorrentFreak continues >>>

In 1933 the phonographic industry held a congress in Rome, Italy, to form an international federation. The fact that Italy had been a fascist dictatorship for eleven years under Benito Mussolini, wasn’t something that bothered them.

On the contrary, the IFPI returned to fascist Italy for the next congress, held in the northern tourist resort of Stresa in 1934. Specially invited was CISAC, the France-based International Confederation of Authors and Composers Societies. They had heavily opposed the IFPI’s goal in giving the phonographic producers rights of their own within the framework of the Berne convention, since they feared this would lessen the composers’ rights. At the meeting in Stresa, the IFPI convinced CISAC to support an alternative line, where the record companies’ rights would be guaranteed in a special convention.

However, CISAC emphasized that this protection were not to be constructed so that the artists’ rights are diminished. The Italian government also showed interest for such a solution of the issue and had a special commission put forward a convention draft on the subject.

Memo from Swedish Department of Justice, 1953

This quote shows it wasn’t just the Mediterranean climate that made the IFPI organize its first activities in fascist Italy. The regime provided especially good support for their lobbying cause.

After the preparations had been made through detailed debates within the jurisprudence, the Rome active International Institute for Unification of Private Rights made the initiative in 1939 to gather an expert committee that would put forward concrete proposals on the subject.

Memo from Swedish Department of Justice, 1953

The committee was headed by Dr.Ostertag and quickly proposed a draft. For a change – or maybe because Mussolini’s Italy at the time was on the verge of World War – the committee’s first meeting was held in Samedan in neutral Switzerland. The committee members were probably less than neutral. Since the committee members had been appointed by the judicial institute in Rome, we can safely assume they were loyal to the fascist regime.

The conclusion from the committee was a proposal to combine the rights of the phonographic industry and the rights of the ‘performers’ (i.e. musicians and actors) in one convention. This had a large impact on the continuing legislation that to this day in 2008, regulate the music economy.

Back to the Wikipedia, “This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 64.254.131.108 (Talk) at 14:03, 14 April 2005,” it says right at the top of the post we’ve quoted in the intro.

“It may differ significantly from the current revision.”

That’s an understatement of an understatement.

The ‘old revision’ gives chapter and verse on the IFPI’s dark and dirty beginnings whereas the second ‘current’ write-up can’t even be said to be abridged. It’s been censored top to bottom.

Where Rev 1 is lengthy and detailed, Rev 2 comprises only a couple of paragraphs of grotesquely sanitised, and very obvious, corporate PR-waffle.

The Wikipedia post, well-written and well researched, could almost be an outline for a book.

Here’s a large excerpt >>>

By early 1967 there were ten independent offshore [radio] broadcasting stations anchored or established at various points off the British coastline. These included three stations established by Don Pierson of Eastland, Texas, which were hybrids of the most successful commercial radio formats which could be heard at that time in the United States. In the end it took a series of tragic events that were unrelated to the issue of censorship to create a political climate where the socialist government of the day had enough support to pass a sweeping new censorship law. The Marine Broadcasting Offences Act turned the preachers, djs, news readers, commercial advertisers, cooks, suppliers, captains and crews of the offshore stations, into criminals facing heavy fines and prison sentences if they continued to broadcast. On Tuesday, August 15, 1967 this draconian new censorship law became effective and it resulted in the overnight death of the majority of the offshore stations. On its last day of broadcasting, Wonderful Radio London had an audience rated somewhere around 12 million listeners in the UK alone, with many more on the European continent.

Resorting to jamming

In the late 1960s another attempt was made at commercial offshore broadcasting and this time it resulted in the Royal Navy being called in to operate a massive jamming transmitter. In the 1980s the British government stationed a ship almost alongside another ship station which had gathered five million British listeners in as many months. The intention of the monitoring ship was to photograph and document for later prosecution, everyone who supplied food, water, fuel, or broadcasting material to the radio ship. As a result of these activities the station was eventually declared bankrupt and it left the airwaves. Radio Caroline which had survived off and on as an offshore broadcaster until 1990, was finally forced off the air when new powers were granted by Parliament to enable raids to take place on radio ships anchored in international waters outside of former British legal jurisdiction.

Piracy and censorship

The history of censorship has become obfuscated by the new use of the word piracy, which originally referred to the hijacking of ships at sea. Today is being used to describe the practice of the unauthorized use of intellectual property. Clearly artists and creators of intellectual works are entitled to a reward for their efforts in presenting new ideas, but unfortunately the electronic means of communication has become controlled like the printing presses of old, so that the commercial interests producing the IFPI licensed products, are also in the control of the means of distribution. Today this clash has resulted in the invention of the term pirate radio which now refers to instances when the means of distribution is no longer under the control of IFPI and its associated interests. In the 1960s this clash led to an interesting situation where pirate radio stations were increasing the popularity of IFPI licensed products, and thereby boosting the commercial sales of its member companies. The companies thus began supplying the pirate radio stations while protesting in the newspapers that the pirate radio stations should be shut down.

For his book … Dr. Eric Gilder “(EG)”, interviewed Don Pierson “(DP)” who created Wonderful Radio London, Swinging Radio England and Britain Radio on board two ships anchored off southeastern England in the 1960s, in which he asked for his views concerning the behavior of IFPI members:

EG: Your commercial radio station depended upon recorded music; what kind of a relationship did you have with the major record companies in the UK, especially since they had a history of promoting the restrictive practice of “needle time”?

DP: Well it’s kind of interesting. The major record companies were, in the press, criticizing our operations. And, yet, each morning, or each afternoon, their messengers were delivering their latest records to us at our London offices to be played on the stations. Finally, one of the major record companies came out with a blast against the free, offshore “pirate” radio stations, and condemning them. When I saw that in the press one day in London, I simply called the managing director of that company, and I told him that we had records of all the visits daily from their messengers, and I did not appreciate the hypocrisy of their condemning us in the press, and yet sending us all these records to build their business. And that if I read another hypocritical article in the press, I was simply going to expose them. And from that time on, we enjoyed quite good relations with the major record companies there in England.

Conflict of interest

While the record companies represented by IFPI wanted to brand Wonderful Radio London as a pirate, that station and another called Radio 390 actively attempted to make royalty payments for the use of recorded material. However, because of the vested mutual interests in the relationship between the British State and PPL which represented the interests of IFPI, these payments were accepted begrudgingly. This strange situation has resulted in obvious conflicts of interest. An example is found in the behaviour of Cliff Richard who had this to say on August 14, 1967, over the air as Wonderful Radio London was being forced off the air because of the new censorship law that went into effect the following day:

Many thanks for all of the plugs in the past, and um, thanks for being so nice about our records, hope and wish you all the very best for the future, staff and djs and whatever you do.

Then, a few years later, the same Cliff Richard was quoted in the IFPI advertising supplement dated June 11, 1983 which was published as a part of Billboard magazine:

The British recording star Cliff Richard made an individual contribution to IFPI’s anti-piracy fund of $5,000 while on a tour of the Far East in 1982. Having seen for himself the extent of piracy in the region, Richard expressed particular concern for local artists. … “I feel that giving a donation to IFPI and SPA (Singapore Association), is the best way I can help the local artist. If I were to give money for a scholarship it wouldn’t be so productive, as musicians are not able to make a living in the present climate. Improve the piracy situation and local artists will thrive. It’s a question of the horse before the cart.”

However, it was the Beatles who saved the British record industry and while the BBC did feature their music from time to time, the only place that their music could be heard all day long was on one of the 10 offshore radio stations of the 1960s. Therefore it is of particular note that attention should be paid to comments by members of the Beatles concerning the alleged “piracy” of their work. In an interview on a Los Angeles radio station (later repackaged and released as part of a record album of comments by the Beatles), John Lennon said:

“… pirate ships they call them, off the British coast … you get good records all day which you never got before, boy, I love it!”

On August 6, 1966 George Harrison explained his views in the weekly music tabloid Disc during an interview with Ray Coleman:

“I can’t understand the Government’s attitude over the pirates. Why don’t they make the BBC illegal as well – it doesn’t give the public the service it wants, otherwise the pirates wouldn’t be here to fill the gap. The Government makes me sick. This is becoming a Police State. They should leave the pirates alone. At least they’ve had a go, which is more than the BBC has done…”

On August 14, 1967 during the final hour of Wonderful Radio London before it signed off for ever, the station aired these final comments by Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones:

“… we’re very sad to see you go, you’ve given us a lot of good times. Thank you very much …”

Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys also added his comments during that same broadcast:

“… the rest of the Beach Boys and myself are very sorry that Radio London’s going off the air … we owe a lot of our success to Radio London’s playing of our records and we’re very sad to see it go off as a lot of our fellow American artists are, and we would just like to say thank you.”

Even the now controversial Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam after converting to Islam), expressed deep regrets about the result of government action to create criminals out of those labeled as “pirate” broadcasters:

“… this is Cat Stevens and I would like to say first of all how very, very sorry I am to hear that Radio London is going off the air because I think its really helped a lot of people in the past. It certainly helped me what with ‘I Love My Dog’ and I really am quite sorry to hear its going off.”

IFPI has attempted to portray the interests of its member recording companies as being the interests of the artists who made the records, which clearly is not the case. There are also comments from many other major recording stars who have expressed similar sentiments concerning their own desire for exposure of their material, versus the controlled exposure sought by IFPI.

Read all of Wikipedia post No 1.

You’ll only need five seconds or so for the pathetic, and probably official, IFPI version.

Adolph and Benito are long gone but, sadly, the IFPI lingers on like an incurable disease.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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