more on RIAA hopes to make ISPs pay for user's P2Pdownloads

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Dana Blankenhorn <danablankenhorn () mindspring com>
Reply-To: Dana Blankenhorn <danablankenhorn () mindspring com>
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 15:19:24 -0500
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] RIAA hopes to make ISPs pay for user's P2Pdownloads

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=24726&site=lightreading

I post this old story as a reminder that what Hilary Rosen is suggesting is,
technically, impossible.

It's impossible to tell what Internet packets are being used for. In the
link above, Panama tried to stop Voice over IP in order to protect the
monopoly of Cable & Wireless (as well as its own tax revenues).

While VOIP (and peer to peer services) may use specific designated ports
that can be turned off, the software can be quickly configured to use other
ports, including the ports on which e-mail and Web traffic is based.

I don't know if Rosen knows this. I don't know that Rosen cares. But it's
clear that RIAA is becoming increasingly frustrated with what appears to be
an unannounced, unsponsored, unorganized, unsupervised, grassroots yet
surprisingly effective economic boycott of a huge industry, namely musical
recording.

When and if these consumers get a business model they accept, with prices
and conditions they find acceptable, I'm sure 95% will be happy to go back
to buying as much music as before, probably a whole lot more.

That would also boost the tech market, by the way, the telecom market, and
the Internet market. It's in all our interests that the Copyright Wars end,
and that the mutual suicide pact between the copyright industries and their
customers come to an end.


Dana Blankenhorn   dana () a-clue com
Buy The Blankenhorn Effect http://www.trafford.com/robots/02-1082.html
Subscribe to A-Clue.Com  http://www.a-clue.com

"War is unhealthy for economies and other living things."

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
To: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Date: Monday, January 20, 2003 2:50 PM
Subject: [IP] RIAA hopes to make ISPs pay for user's P2Pdownloads


> ------ Forwarded Message
> From: Randall <rvh40 () insightbb com>
> Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 14:17:20 -0500
> To: cyberia-l () listserv aol com
> Cc: dave () farber net
> Subject: RIAA hopes to make ISPs pay for user's P2P downloads
>
> http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/0,6119,2-13_1309247,00.html
>
> Cannes - A top music executive has said that telecommunications companies
> and
> internet service providers (ISPs) will be asked to pay up for giving their
> customers access to free song-swapping sites.
>
>
> The music industry is in a tailspin with global sales of CDs expected to
> fall
> six percent in 2003, its fourth consecutive annual decline. A major
culprit,
> industry watchers say, is online piracy.
>
>
> Now, the industry wants to hit the problem at its source - internet service
> providers.
>
>
> "We will hold ISPs more accountable," said Hillary Rosen, chairman and CEO
> the
> Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), in her keynote speech at
> the Midem music conference on the French Riviera.
>
>
> "Let's face it. They know there's a lot of demand for broadband simply
> because
> of the availability (of file-sharing)," Rosen said.
>
>
> As broadband access in homes has increased across the Western world, so has
> the activity on file-sharing services.
>
>
> Impossible to enforce
>
>
> The RIAA is a powerful trade body that has taken a number of file-swapping
> services, including the now defunct Napster, to court in an effort to shut
> them down.
>
>
> Rosen suggested one possible scenario for recouping lost sales from online
> piracy would be to impose a type of fee on ISPs that could be passed on to
> their customers who frequent these file-swapping services.
>
>
> Mario Mariani, senior vice president of media and access at Tiscali,
> Europe's
> third largest ISP, dismissed the notion, calling it impossible to enforce.
>
>
> "The peer-to-peer sites are impossible to fight. In any given network,
> peer-to-peer traffic is between 30 and 60 percent of total traffic. We
> technically cannot control such traffic," he said.
>
>
> Rosen's other suggestions for fighting online piracy were more
conciliatory.
> She urged the major music labels, which include Sony Music, Warner Music,
> EMI,
> Universal Music and Bertelsmann's BMG, to ease licensing restrictions,
> develop digital copyright protections for music, and invest more in
> promoting
> subscription download services.
>
>
> Pressplay and MusicNet, the online services backed by the majors, plus
> independent legitimate services such as Britain's Wippit.com, sounded
> somewhat optimistic about their longterm chances to derail free services
> such
> as Kazaa and Morpheus.
>
>
> But they also acknowledged they cannot compete with the "free" players
until
> the labels clear up the licensing morass that keeps new songs from being
> distributed online for a fee.
>
>
> Legal step
>
>
> Officials from Pressplay and MusicNet, which are in their second year in
> operation, declined to disclose how many customers they have.
>
>
> "We haven't really started yet," said Alan McGlade, CEO of MusicNet, when
> asked about his subscriber base.
>
>
> Michael Bebel, CEO of Pressplay, said his customers tally is in the tens of
> thousands. He added that the firm, backed by Universal and Sony, could
> expand
> into Canada in the first half of the year, its second market after the US.
> He
> didn't have a timeframe for Europe.
>
>
> Meanwhile, Kazaa and Morpheus claim tens of millions of registered users
who
> download a wide variety of tracks for free.
>
>
> Rosen hailed a recent US court decision which ruled that Kazaa, operated by
> Australian-based technology firm Sharman Networks, could be tried in
> America,
> as an important legal step to halting the activities of file-sharing
> services.
>
>
> "It's clear to me these companies are profiting to the tune of millions and
> millions of dollars. They must be held accountable," Rosen said.
>
>
>
> --
> Note to the Men In Black: This is NOT a "Burning Bush" reference!
> Thank you for reading my mail, and for keeping me safe.
>
>
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