p2pnet.net News:- If you can’t stomp ‘em, swamp ‘em.

That’s the message inherent in news that the Big Four record label cartel is trying yet another angle to get around the fact music is being distributed online without its ‘help’ – that’s to say, via the p2p file sharing networks.

The idea? Start a few RIAA-backed p2p applications.

“CD shipments are surging this year,” although not enough to cancel last year’s, “declines in the music business,” says the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), quoted in a ZDNet story, which goes on:

“The record industry’s trade group said the value of shipments of all music at the midpoint of 2004 had climbed nearly 4 percent compared to the previous year. The industry has shipped 10 percent more CDs to retail outlets than last year, showing a strong increase in demand.”

And yet the cartel-owned mouthpiece continues to maintain the music industry is being devasted by file sharers. That’s its excuse for trying to to sue them into submission – submission being a point at which the millions of former ‘consumers’ will pay a dollar and more for the flacid mp3 tracks the music industry is trying to palm off through the corporate music sites.

It seems the entertainment industry’s INDUCE act, designed to kill p2p, among other things, is down the tubes despite valiant attempts by Hollywood adherent senator Orrin Hatch to force it through the US congress.

Ironically, the RIAA dealt the final blow.

Now, “At a panel held Wednesday by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, at least one record industry representative predicted that such sanctioned P2P services will start to proliferate in the next several months,” says Wired News, going on to quote RIAA senior vp of government relations and legislative counsel as saying:

“We are going to see three or four of these in the very, very near future.”

Glazier said the new services will be “consumer-friendly and enable the portability that digital music consumers demand, all without running afoul of copyright law,” says Wired.

“P2P technology is great,” Glazier says in the report. “It can be harnessed for good or harnessed for bad.”

Glazier told Wired News that it’s still, “unclear whether consumers will be willing to pay for P2P services, but companies such as Wurld Media and Snowpack are trying to wrap up deals with various record labels to try out new service models”.

Wurld Media? “Powered by its patent-pending Cooperative Communication Network (CCN) protocol, LX Systems software harnesses the true and legitimate power of distributive computing and applies it to the commercial marketplace,” says its web page.

And Snowpack? Who knows?

One thing is certain: neither Wurld Media nor Snowpack, whatever it is, has anything to do with the online music scene. But with the RIAA involved, that doesn’t mean a thing.

The two companies have been selected to in effect front for the music industry in much the same way a little-known firm named Audible Magic was adopted as the front-piece for spurious RIAA claims that decentralized p2p applications can be filtered.

In the meanwhile, the owners of the main commercial p2p applications – BearShare, Blubster, eDonkey, Grokster and Morpheus, who for years have been trying to arrange meaningful talks with the entertainment industry – can only watch and wait.

And what of Mitch Glazier?

Now an RIAA employee, he was once chief counsel, Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property, and former chief of staff to Howard Coble, ex-chairman of the subcommittee.

Glazier earned his bones with the RIAA when in 1999 he greased the now infamous “sound recording” amendment into the completely unrelated Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act, slated for safe passage through Congress.

This made music recordings ‘works for hire’ which in turn meant artists weren’t able to get possession of their own masters.

The amendment led to an oversight hearing in May, 2000, chaired by senator Coble who led off with: “As many of you know, this amendment has caused some to criticize my colleagues, my staff, and me as having indulged in unfair, deceptive, and sneaky behavior.”

In short, believe “sanctioned P2P services” are on the way.

(Thanks, Greg)

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See:-

surging – CD shipments surge after lean years, ZDNet, October 20, 2004

final blow – RIAA collapses INDUCE talks, p2pnet, October 8, 2004

sanctioned P2P services – Toe-to-Toe Over Peer-to-Peer, Wired News, 2004

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 21st, 2004 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. 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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