Winning ‘hearts and minds’
While Mitch Bainwol, US recording industry mouthpiece, says the labels have no intention of dropping their bitter sue ‘em all campaign against American file sharers, Grokster’s ex-boss says licensing songs shared over p2p networks could be better than criminalising file-swappers.
British p2p users could soon be in the same boat as their US counterparts and, “We want to increase consumer awareness of the legal implications of file-sharing,” Andrew Yeates, director general of the UK’s BPI (British Phonographic Industry) was recently quoted as saying.
A different BBC report here says he told the Internet Service Providers’ Association (Ispa) Parliamentary Forum that although changes in European copyright legislation had helped stem one threat to the music industry, the biggest battle, was winning the “hearts and minds” of net users and raising awareness about file-swapping over the net and copyright infringements”.
Former Grokster president Wayne Russo, now ceo of Optisoft SL, creator of the Blubster and Piolet p2p apps, said the music industry had a history of opposing new technologies and was using copyright as a weapon.
“The recording industry does not understand the technology,” the Beeb story has him saying. “All they want to do it is kill it. They want you to believe that all their problems are due to peer-to-peer technology.”
The labels weren’t doing enough to find alternative ways of making use of p2p technology and licensing music tracks shared over networks could be a better tactic for the industry, instead of criminalising file-swappers.
Yeates said peer-to-peer was just one of the problems facing their business and the European music industry was trying to find ways to use industry-backed p2p services, says the story, adding:
“Mr Yeates said important lessons had been learned from the legal action the RIAA had taken (Recording Industry Association of America) in targeting individual file-swappers in the US. But, he said, it was important to make the legal framework already in place in the UK work more effectively. ‘The RIAA proved a number of things, and created the awareness of illegality”.
Efforts were continuing to make sure there was a “balance of responsibility” between ISPs and the music industry, “within a more refined and harmonised legal framework in the UK” and, “We are looking at opportunities to say where people are committing a criminal offence, we should be able to gather evidence about them.”
