UK Lords on Hollywood, Big Music, 3 strikes plan
p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics | Music:- The UK version of the entertainment industry’s Three Strikes business plan, touted as an independent proposal under the UK Digital Economy Bill, enters the committee stage in the House of Lords tomorrow.
It goes there apparently backed by what the mainstream media wrongly perceive as principal elements of the artist community, namely, members of the Featured Artists Coalition, with Dave Rowntree of Blur, Nick Mason of Pink Floyd, Ed O’Brien of Radiohead, Kate Nash, Hal Ritson of The Young Punx, Howard Jones, Mark Kelly of Marillion, Sandie Shaw, Master Shortie, Lucy Pullin of The Fire Escapes, Ross Millard of The Futureheads, Fran Healy of Travis, Annie Lennox, and Billy Bragg on its board of directors.
That’s a big deal because it gives the erroneous impression the majority of performers are solidly behind the ‘graduated response’ law, which would have ISPs as corporate copyright cops and the UK government as an official corporate copyright agency.
British taxpayers, not Hollywood or Big Music, would foot the bill.
However, only a handful, relatively speaking, of FAC members actually put their names to a support statement and meanwhile a2f2a.com, a new, for-the-moment loosely knit, organisation comprising artists and fans, has been born.
It, too, is based on a Three Stage plan, to wit >>>
- Help each community better understand the other;
- Help find a practical and workable system which offers artists fair remuneration in exchange for access to material by fans; and
- Help set the agenda for discussions about the role P2P can play within the emergent digital record industry.
‘The music industry is in desperate trouble’
It’s still very early days with fans providing most of the forward motion, but a paper by US intellectual property law attorney Bennett Lincoff, mooting a form of internet tax, sparked a lot of interest on a2f2a.com.
Submitted by him to last year’s Canadian government Copyright Consultations, “The music industry is in free fall, and it is dragging down all other relevant stakeholders with it,” he says, continuing:
“To date, all that the industry has accomplished through its brute force efforts is to waste time, lose money, and squander goodwill. No time remains for stopgap measures. There can be no justification for further delay in the implementation of needed change.”
You can read the full paper here on p2pnet or on a2f2a.com, where Lincoff has just started a promising two-way discussion with a2f2a.com members.
Canada isn’t under a Three Strikes threat. Yet. But if Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music, and Disney, News Corp, Time Warner, Viacom, NBC Universal and Sony Pictures, are given same kind of free rein they’re enjoying in France and Britain, it won’t be long in coming.
“The music industry is in desperate trouble,” says Lincoff in the introduction to his paper, going on >>>
It has been in a decade-long death-spiral for which no one has yet offered a recovery plan that has worked.
It is my purpose in these Comments to propose legal reform and a comprehensive alternative approach to rights administration that will not only reverse the music industry’s decline but will also simultaneously promote technological innovation, enhance the free markets for consumer electronics and technology products, facilitate the growth of all manner of licensed music services (including licensed streaming and download services, and licensed P2P and social networks), and meet consumer demand for full, unfettered, DRM-free and lawful access to music.
The plan I propose involves the creation of a new right for music industry rights holders specifically adapted to digital transmissions of sound recordings and the musical works they embody. In Part III, I will define this new right (the “digital transmission right”), and discuss ownership, authority to grant licenses, division of royalties earned, conduct for which a license would be required, and the parties who would be responsible for obtaining licenses in particular circumstances.
The digital transmission right would be implemented through a combination of voluntary collective rights management and licenses freely negotiated between individual rights holders and music service providers (known as “direct licenses”).
In this regard, in Part IV, I will discuss the formation and regulation of voluntary collective rights management organizations; offer suggestions regarding governance, transparency, accountability and regulation; discuss the relationship of collectives to the individual rights holders who are their members; the relationship to each other of collectives in different territories; the relationship of collectives to digital music service providers; the basis upon which collectives might license digital transmissions, including transmissions that begin in one territory and end in another; the role of direct licensing in the context of collective management; license fees; the conduct of music use monitoring to support royalty distribution; and the allocation and payment of royalties to rights holders, including royalties payable for transborder transmissions.
The digital transmission right would not depend on the use of DRM for its success. Its monetization would not involve the imposition on rights holders of a statutory, compulsory or legal license. It would not require that a broadband access levy or tax be imposed on Internet users. And it would not require the compelled enlistment of ISPs or colleges and universities as enforcers on behalf of music industry rights holders.
Through the digital transmission right, implemented as I suggest in these Comments, authorized transmissions of recorded music could be made available from the largest number and widest array of licensed sources, anytime, anywhere, to anyone with network access. This, in turn, would provide authors, publishers, artists and producers, in the aggregate, with their best opportunity to do as well — if not better — financially than they have done under the system that the digital transmission right would replace.
Finally, in Part V, I will briefly critique proposals made by others regarding the possible roles that ISPs might play in efforts to resolve the crisis in the digital music marketplace. These include: Graduated response; licensing ISPs in their capacities as music service providers as a standalone proposition; compulsory licensing for “non-commercial” P2P coupled with a mandatory Internet access levy (as proposed by the German Green Party); and voluntary licensing of P2P that occurs “without motive of financial gain” coupled with payment of a voluntary Internet access levy (as proposed by the Songwriters Association of Canada). As will be seen, however, none of these offers a solution that meets the needs of all the relevant stakeholders; none provides a full and fair solution to the ongoing public policy deadlock.
The ‘digital transmission right’
Lincoff believes a “digital transmission right” would “bring about change that is directly and proportionately responsive to the challenges presented by the Internet; change that creates a new and fair balance between the rights of creators and those of music users; change that is technologically neutral; change that meets the needs of all the many competing stakeholders in the digital music marketplace. The digital transmission right will foster a legal marketplace for digital transmissions of recorded music with rules that are as simple, straightforward and clear as the context will allow; rules that are sufficiently flexible to adapt to the continually changing economic and technological environment of the global digital network.”
Moreover, “Its adoption of the digital transmission right would establish Canada as the leader in the worldwide effort to reform intellectual property law for the digital age,” he says.
It’ll be interesting to learn what their lordships come up with, tomorrow.
Hopefully, whatever it is will align more with the views of Lord Ralph Lucas, who recently said, “We are talking about powerful, monopolistic industries and giving them power over our citizens is something we ought to be careful of”, than those of Lord Peter Mandelson, who’s fronting the bill on behalf of the cartels.
Whatever they decide, it’s important the people it’s all about — the musicians and fans — have a clear position and with that in mind, Bragg, an a2f2a.com co-founder, asked in a recent post, “Does someone want to frame Bennett’s proposals in a simplified form that we can build a consensus upon?”
“How about polling a2f2a participants beforehand?” – asks Crosbie Fitch, suggesting it should be framed along the lines >>>
Of the following three views on file-sharing, which is closest to your own?
1) File-sharing should remain illegal, though copyright might need some reform and more appropriate enforcement to address it.
2) File-sharing should be permitted, so it would be best to compensate publishers from an Internet tax (aka compulsory license fee).
3) Monopolies such as copyright shouldn’t apply to the Internet, nor should a tax – a free market will be fine. Sharing and building upon published music is natural.
“The results of such a poll might then indicate the likelihood of a2f2a participants ‘building a consensus’ upon any proposal for an Internet tax,” he says.
Stay tuned.
Jon Newton – p2pnet / a2f2a.com
..… and identi.ca
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
here on p2pnet – ‘The music industry is in free fall …’, December 11, 2009
on a2f2a.com – ‘The music industry is in free fall …’, December 11, 2009
Lord Ralph Lucas – Sharing between friends is OK: Lord Lucas, Dandecember 7, 2009
Lord Peter Mandelson – Biggest copyright sting in history, November 19, 2009
January, 2010
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January 5th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
The music industry is in free fall, and it is dragging down all other relevant stakeholders with it,++`…
There have been suggestions on how to make it better. The problem is that the music industry doesn’t want to take them up as it means an end to the stranglehold they’ve enjoyed over the past. Until it gets worse, there will be no change unless their very survival is at stake.
Right now, their lapdog, the RIAA is on everyone’s hate list that the music industry needs to make it’s comeback. They mistakenly believe that all ill will goes towards the RIAA and not where it belongs, which is right in the lap of the majors. I for one blame the majors and I have no intention, no matter what laws are changed, of returning to being a good little consumer. There are other ways to spend my discretionary income besides music. Music is no longer a must have.
Since I’ve cared for very little that’s come out musicwise in the last decade, there is very little interest in having the latest greatest nor of the repeat buy. I’ve had plenty of time to obtain all I wanted from the decades before.
There is now games, the internet, the hardware that makes my computer faster or preform better, which consumes the money. Those are what I want, not music. My tastes and probably a lot of other potential customers have changed. No amount of law making will change customer wants. You can look at the failed War on Drugs to see how successful that’s been.
The major labels no longer connect artist to fan. Instead they’ve replaced good will with ill will in customers minds. (mine for sure) I’ve not bought a single movie nor song since I went on boycott over this sue’em all. Nice to know it’s having an accumulative effect finally.
January 5th, 2010 at 4:13 pm
The labels business model is based on a law that is outdated, outmoded and out of touch with current technology and reality.
Reform needs to be made to copywrite law -not- to the music industry. They can either adapt or as seems more likely given their track record so far, die, we the public don’t care about them beyond hating how they have gouged us for years.
What we should be caring about, what we should be shouting about is how our culture is being stolen and locked away by corporate interests.
Copywrite shouldn’t last more than ten years total. Maximum. It was created as a pact between creators and the public to enable said creators to make a living from their creations and then have such pass into the public domain. This has been perverted again and again and again systematically by corporate interests for their own gain. The creators themselves rarely gain from these extensions and as a society we are being harmed as our culture, our artistic history, is being locked away by faceless corporations.
We all create every day or our lives in some small way. Do we expect to be paid for lifetime plus seventy years for creating a new spreadsheet for our company, driving a truck to deliver office furniture or installing cabling in a new building? No. Yes, we wish to reward those who can enrich our lives with beauty and wonder, no we don’t want said rewards stolen away by shameless faceless entities as happens all too often under the current system.
Change will come, we have to speak out to ensure it is the right changes that are made.