RIAA hopes to make ISPs pay for user's P2P downloads

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ 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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