EMI to step up attacks on its customers
p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- ” ‘Music’ corporations hear me: embrace the internet or die.”
That’s quite literally the bottom line in James Ashton’s Times Online story that EMI Music’s recently appointed boss Elio Leoni-Sceti is, “stepping up his push for providers to clamp down on consumers illegally downloading millions of pounds worth of digital music”.
Guy Hands, chairman at EMI, was in the process of poaching Sceti from Reckitt Benckiser, “the consumer products giant behind brands such as Cillit Bang, Veet hair remover and Finish dishwasher tablets,” noted Ashton in a Times Online item from last year, going on:
“His arrival as chief executive of the division will send a shiver down the spine of artists wary of yet another executive joining the company from outside the industry. However, Mr Sceti has a strong background in marketing honed at Procter & Gamble in Italy and France.”
That he’s continuing the policy of attacking the people who keep his company alive is fully in accordance with Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG efforts to use governments everywhere to bludgeon ISPs into putting corporate music interests ahead of their own by acting as Big 4 copyright cops.
In carefully modulated PR terms custom-created to catch the collective eye of the mainstream media, “Internet service providers play a significant role because they own the pipe,” Ashton has Sceti saying. “In England we know there is a lot of water and content filtering wastefully through the pipes across the country. The pipe owner has a responsibility to close the holes.”
Leoni-Sceti is slated to welcome Lord Carter’s Digital Britain proposals, “which require internet firms to warn customers when they are illegally downloading, but call for them to go further,” says the Times.
Carefully co-ordinated universal campaign
“Ministers intend to pass regulations on internet piracy requiring service providers to tell customers they suspect of illegally downloading films and music that they are breaking the law, says the draft report by Lord Carter,” according to a recent Financial Times story.
“It would also make them collect data on serious and repeated infringers of copyright law, which would then be made available to music companies or other rights-holders who can produce a court order for them to be handed over.”
The UK move is part of a carefully co-ordinated universal campaign to bring internet sales under direct corporate control with various ‘trade’ units such as the RIAA the US and BPI in Britain acting as movie and record label lobbyists and media mouthpieces, said p2pnet, going on:
“The Carter report even suggests ISPs and ‘rights-holding organisations” would have to contribute financially to the creation of a unit, which would be called the Rights Agency.
“Laughably, the measures would, ‘form the spine of a new code of conduct for the internet industry,’ says the story.”
Broadcasting regulator Ofcom would be in charge, said the FT.
Now, “In a maiden speech to the broadcasting industry this week, Leoni-Sceti will welcome Lord Carter’s Digital Britain proposals, which require internet firms to warn customers when they are illegally downloading, but call for them to go further,” says Ashton.
It’s important to remember Sceti is speaking for a hard-core commercial corporation mandated only to keep its shareholders happy, not some sort of official body to whom the UK government, or any other government, come to that, is required to answer.
Adds the Times Online:
“Internet bosses think music labels should do more to put their own house in order before they are made to snoop on subscribers.”
ISPA, the internet companies’ trade body, declined to comment.
Times Online – Stop download flood, says music chief, February 22, 2009
Times Online – EMI close to naming Elio Leoni Sceti as chief, June 27, 2008
Financial Times – Internet piracy regulations planned for UK, January 16, 2009
p2pnet – New UK government anti-P2P unit, January 16, 2009
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February 23rd, 2009 at 1:38 pm
A guy that use to sell detergents is now suposed to sell what they still call “”"music!!!”"”?
No wonder why the real music are no longer with these guys anymore!
What a crisis!
February 23rd, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Gun crime escalating in the UK and they are wasting govenment time on this shit.
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:11 pm
I must be a pedophile, since, after all, I download music all the time. That will upgrade to ‘murderer’ status in a couple of years, probably.
I just think it’s ridiculous how they are trying to equate truly disgusting, heinous crimes that actually *do* need to be punished. I mean, we’re already filling our jails with drug users, and now they want to put every mp3 downloader there, too. It costs about $50,000 per year per person to keep someone in jail. Talk about wasting taxpayer money!