p2pnet news | RIAA News:- RIAA boss Mitch Bainwol has attacked American ISPs, accusing them of profiting from P2P file sharing.

Too many of them, “have turned a blind eye to online theft, all the while benefiting from the many subscribers who pay for broadband access primarily to steal music and other content,” Bainwol (left) told the House Subcommittee on Telecommunication and the Internet yesterday, going on:

“These ISPs would just as soon pretend that congestion was not fundamentally a problem directly connected to theft.

“And some prefer to cure congestion with greater efficiency - solving their problem but compounding ours.”

On February 13, subcommitte chairman chairman Edward Markey introduced HR 5353, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, “continuing his efforts started in 2006 to ensure that the historic, open architecture nature of the Internet will be preserved and fostered for the consumers, content providers and high tech innovators of the future”.

With him was Chip Pickering.

Net neutrality is now a key topic in Canada and the US Hollywood [Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney] and the organised music gang [Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US)] doing everything in their considerable power to make sure it never happens.

“In the dark, we are one,” p2pnet posted in March, quoting MPAA boss Dan Glickman (right), pointing out his comment came, “during his attack on net neutrality which, he made clear, is abhored by Hollywood”

According to Glickman, Net Neutrality may be a “clever name,” but, “at the end of the day, there’s nothing neutral about this for our customers or for our ability to make great movies in the future”.

Mitch Bainwol, his opposite number in Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA, wholeheartedly agrees, kicking off his presentation to the House telecom subcommittee with two disingenuous, to be charitable, statements.

1) “At the outset,”he said, “let me stress that we are excited about the opportunities that the Internet provides to expose the public to new artists and offer consumers new choices in the way they get and consume our music.”

And 2), “We encourage and applaud any innovation for the lawful consumption of music over different digital platforms, and caution against taking action that would stifle the innovation of legitimate business models.”

Enter ‘piracy’ described by Bainwol as an “elephant” that can’t be ignored and which, he says, is so severe [shouldn't that be large, Mitch] that it’s, “causing significant congestion over our broadband networks, degrading the online experience for consumers and imposing unnecessary costs on ISPs.”

Neither Bainwol nor Glickman bothered to point out the corporate music and movie industries are themselves directly responsible for a staggering amount of online congestion, if that’s what it is.

P2P networks are heavily loaded with entertainment industry ’spoofs’ —- fake files posted to mimic the real thing and meant to discourage people from downloading.

Meanwhile, “We, as a society, must address the root cause of these problems - piracy - and not just the current symptoms, such as traffic congestion,” Bainwol says.

Under the bill, ISPs wouldn’t be able to block all P2P traffic because it might be used for file sharing, but they’d be able to deploy some kind of filtering or digital fingerprinting in an effort to prevent copyrighted files being shared.

But that wouldn’t be enough for the RIAA.

Actions taken by ISPs to, “deter piracy” should be, “applied evenly over all types of pirated content to the extent technologically feasible,” he told the subcommittee, continuing:

“Just as ISPs should not unfairly discriminate against lawful traffic for anticompetitive purposes, ISPs should not be able to target only certain forms of piracy that may compete with their legitimate content offerings and not other forms of piracy.”

Society, “should not accept the invitation of certain stakeholders to turn a blind eye to piracy, and only address some of its symptoms,” he stated, adding, “if effective marketplace solutions do not become a reality in the near term, regulation may indeed be necessary to address the rampant piracy that is the cause of network congestion and ensure that ISPs take steps to reduce piracy in a non-discriminatory manner.

“Most important, any such regulation should be faithful to the distinction between lawful and unlawful content. The recording industry applauds the sponsors for this important recognition that we believe is central to both the underlying reasons for this debate and any ultimate solution.”

Jon Newton - p2pnet

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 8:34 am and is filed under RIAA News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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