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UK ISPs Looking To Work With Entertainment Industry; But What About Consumers?
from the something's-missing... dept
Slashdot points us to the news that, over in the UK, various ISPs are closing in on some sort of an agreement to "deal with" unauthorized file sharing. A representative for the ISPs notes:
"Some kind of agreement between rightholders and ISPs can be reached. Everyone wants to work together to make legal online models work."Of course, that's rather misleading on a few significant points:
- It's not everyone who is working together here. Consumers are entirely left out of the equation. Consumers end up being worse off in these scenarios, and open to losing their internet access or potentially other charges due to weak evidence. Plus they end up paying more for less music.
- Musicians in many cases (the labels certainly don't represent musicians' interests) are being left out here -- especially those musicians who have learned how to embrace free music and use it to their advantage. Those musicians will end up getting punished for their innovation by having industry agreements backstop obsolete business models.
- There's no reason why ISPs should be involved. The recording industry's problem isn't that ISPs aren't helping out, but that the recording industry refuses to recognize the changing market that necessitates a different business model.
- An agreement, inevitably means both sides gave up something, and it continues the myth that business models in this market are antagonistic. It ignores the fact that there are win-win business models, such as those employed by Trent Reznor, where no one is worse off. Instead, these sorts of agreements make everyone worse off.
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Reader Comments (rss)
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Big Bother (Corprate version) is Watching.
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Re: Big Bother (Corprate version) is Watching.
"There's no reason why ISPs should be involved.". Quite true. The ISPs should be limited to delivering the mail. They should have no implicit right to inspect the mail or to make any assessment as to its legitimacy. As TechDirt has noted, the ISP should not be the content industry's police force.
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Musicians Should Sell Their Music to Their Audience
Only record labels are having big trouble selling copies of music recordings.
Musicians might have little bit of trouble selling music recordings, but at least they don't need to sell copies (and so don't need the monopoly of copyright).
Record labels are now competing with a musician's audience to provide musicians with value for money in terms of promotion and distribution of their music.
It shouldn't be surprising that record labels are engaging in litigation against their biggest competitors, i.e. musicians' audiences.
A musician's audience is expert at online and word-of-mouth promotion, and will gladly produce copies of a musician's work without charge.
Seems like a no-brainer to sell music to your audience.
Even so, the labels are still trying to entice new and gullible bands to sign with them. See Saving on A&R.
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Clinging to obsolete business models
Sure, novel business models would probably be a win-win thing, but in their eyes, it would still be worse than their WIN-whatever one they are desperately trying to keep alive (and failing).
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I am the law!
I also find the it is NOT the responsibility of the OS (operating system) to determine if the content I access/play/run on MY computer is legal or not (via some hash/DRM/ETC. policy check).
No entity (be it the post, ISP or OS) should impersonate an officer of the law. It is especially a miscarriage of justice when these entities take action with a proper judicial review process.
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creeping dread
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Re: Three Stikes
Also, I am curious whether the spit ball will be outlawed.
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Everyone is too distracted by the economy falling apart to worry about something small like abuse of privacy laws.
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Re:
In 1710 (UK) and 1790 (US) the privilege of copyright was created to partially suspend this liberty, specifically the right for members of the public to make copies or derivatives of books that they had purchased. This 'right to copy' was then granted to publishers - hence the name 'copyright'.
So, file-sharers are actually enjoying their natural rights.
Ideally those rights are no longer suspended for the benefit of publishers, but are fully restored to the public, by abolishing copyright.
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Re: Re:
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Re: Re: Re:
It is actually impossible to sign one's rights away - this is what is meant by inalienable.
It takes the power of a government to grant privileges that supersede individual rights.
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Re:
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Re: Re: Big Bother (Corprate version) is Watching.
If they can cut down on piracy and other bandwidth-heavy usage, they get to spend less on infrastructure investment and improve their margins. This absolutely benefits them, so it is unsurprising to see them want to "lock down" what you can do with your internet connection.
Do I think it's right? Of course not, but I'm also not surprised to see such a move from telecom. Remember this is the same industry that said plugging non-approved phones into your wall could take down your whole neighborhood's phone service. If they can find a way to get you paying for 20 meg and only using 2, they will.
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Downloading of copyrighted materials is illegal
Try to this for a change; pay for your damn music and quit stealing it.
Regards.
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reqeust
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