Towards a "Piracy" Endgame - but who are the pirates?

Thursday, July 24. 2008

Towards a "Piracy" Endgame - but who are the pirates?

From the BBC:

Six of the UK's biggest net providers (BSkyB, Virgin, Orange, Tiscali, Carphone Warehouse, and BT) have agreed a plan with the music industry to tackle piracy online.

The deal, negotiated by the government, will see hundreds of thousands of letters sent to net users suspected of illegally sharing music.

But the music industry wants people's internet cut off if they ignore repeated warnings, something the web firms say they are not prepared to do.

No change there, then - so what is different?

The plan commits the firms to working towards a "significant reduction" in the illegal sharing of music.

It also commits the net firms to develop legal music services, the BBC has been told. The BBC has been told that the firms have agreed to ensure their customers know it is illegal to share copyrighted music. It is believed that the memorandum also requires net firms to go further in their attempts to tackle illegal file-sharing.

At the same time the government is also expected to start a consultation exercise that could result in laws that force net firms to tackle music piracy.

We heartily endorse the formation of legal music services to compete with iTunes, and are delighted the government will tackle music piracy. A good start to tackling piracy would be to examine the absurd prices music companies goug.... charge for online music, when most of the cost of physical reproduction and distribution has been stripped away in the online model.

This is not a one sided game, the music industry is as much an actor in its own travails as are those evil and venal members of the public. In fact, as iTunes showed, if you charge reasonable prices for a decent service there is a market to be made. Failure to address this issue will make any law an ass.

But you know all this - and as Al Stewart once sang, the more it changes, the more it stays the same. (You can buy that legally over here)

Update - the Indy suggests there will be a £30 flat fee licence for music downloading:

Internet users could face an annual charge of up to £30 to download music, under plans to be unveiled today that aim to tackle illegal file-sharing.

Ministers are backing proposals that would enable millions of broadband users to pay an annual levy which would allow them to copy as much – previously illegal – music from the internet as they wanted. The money raised would be channelled back to the rights-holders, with artists responsible for the most popular songs receiving a bigger slice of the cash.

Some are wailing and gnashing teeth of course but that seems quite a sensible compromise. So long as the creators do see it.....

Posted by Alan Patrick in Digital Media Web 2.0 at 07:12 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

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Theres one thing they have not addressed. The continued artificial enforcement of regionalisation.

Many albums and movies are released often months apart between the UK and the USA.

TV shows are especially guilty of this.

I note that when Sky began showing TV shows only days after it had broadcast in the U.S. that I stopped grabbing a copy from the torrents. Those shows which still had me waiting several months were still in the download queue.

As the report on the BBC mentioned there is a large proportion of us who are more than happy to download against a subcription service but it wont work if the Gouge or Delay artificially.

thanks for writing.

#1 nicholas butler (Homepage) on 2008-07-24 07:59 (Reply)

This is timely.

Just yesterday on a podcast I was discussing the new BSkyB offering (with Universal catalogue), which is to be a subscription based service. Flat monthly rate allowing limitless streaming, and limited downloads.

Now, think about this for a sec.

Subscription service = music becoming a utility.

In this permanently connected world where 3G is practically omni-present why is there a need to "own" music any more, when we can simply stream the music?

Given that BSkyB have a powerhouse in the paid for TV space it's not rocket science to assume that the subscription service will also roll-out onto an easy to use sofa remote control - easy to use technology = successful technology.

This, IMHO, will be a serious challenger to 70% iTunes domination.

Considering BSkYB (broadband provider also) will be offering this subscription service they will not be best pleased as illegal downloading, and would likely target this lost revenue....

The cast is here (warning it is explicit in places)
http://tinyurl.com/6ywvjh

#2 Chris (Homepage) on 2008-07-24 08:31 (Reply)

This news comes only a couple days after the UK Film Council published figures on the size of the UK’s Video on Demand market (see chapter 12 of the 2008 Yearbook). Despite there being 13 million UK households (53% of the total) with a broadband connection in 2007, ‘the online VoD market remained small with estimated revenues of around £700,000.’

Industry research estimates there were 127 million digitally-pirated movies in 2007, which cannibalised the official market to a value of £53 million. The time is ripe for some concerted action, whether that involves carrot (attractive legal downloading alternatives) or stick. http://www.biggerpictureresearch.com

#3 Jim Barratt (Homepage) on 2008-07-24 11:54 (Reply)

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