January 24, 2008
A new ally in the fight against piracy?
The entertainment industry thinks it has found a new opening in its fight against online piracy and is working hard to make it count.
Internet service providers are being pushed into the front lines of this battle - some willingly. In the US, AT&T was pretty open a couple of weeks ago about lining up behind NBC Universal to stamp out illegal content passing over its networks. In France, President Sarkozy gave the media industry hope when he came up with a plan that forces ISPs to cut off pirates on the third offense.
To John Kennedy, head of music industry trade body IFPI, this is the beginning of something much bigger. In the IFPI’s annual report today he calls for ISPs to take a central role in monitoring internet traffic - and for governments to follow France’s lead in making the internet a medium where "we protect our culture":
There must be obligations on the ISPs to warn, suspend and eventually disconnect infringing users and apply filtering measures… 2007 was the year ISP responsibility started to become an accepted principle. 2008 must be the year it becomes reality.
It hardly needs saying that the implications of this are far-reaching. Should ISPs be forced to monitor what passes over their networks, make decisions about what is or isn’t legal, and act unilaterally on the results?
In the US, this is quickly turning into the next eruption of the net neutrality debate. The Federal Trade Commission has already said this month that it is going to investigate Comcast’s move to block file-sharing traffic on BitTorrent.
It is easy to understand why ISPs would use the piracy issue as an excuse to try to exert more control over the economics of their networks. But do they really want the policing responsibility that would go along with it?
“Protect our culture”? What *is* our culture exactly, and why does it need protecting? 99% of music is a) dull, b) one-riff wonders, and/or c) stupidly expensive. I have no qualms about paying for music that I like, but I only buy about 5 or 6 CDs a year (and half of them are from second-hand shops - is that illegal yet?)
Our “culture” was dispensed with when “culture” became about the money. Real culture is about what we do, not what we buy. In which case, the *method* by which we obtain our music is far more “cultural” than the music itself.
And so in which case, yes, our “culture” *does* need protecting. But not by ever more monitoring and stick shaking.
Posted by: Scribe | January 25th, 2008 at 8:30 am | Report this comment