Showing posts with label prs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prs. Show all posts

14 July 2010

Should the Music Industry Pay ISPs for Piracy?

In the wake of its “success” in pushing through Digital Economy Act, the British music industry is hoping to move on to the next stage: using it as a lever to get more money out of the system (even though the music industry is currently thriving).

The UK royalties collector PRS For Music has just published a rough blueprint [.pdf] for how this might be done, entitled: “Moving Digital Britain Forward, without leaving Creative Britain behind”. It's a fascinating document, and merits close reading.

As the title suggests, there are essentially just two players in this analysis: the music industry, and the ISPs (the public are obviously irrelevant here). The ISPs are no longer lowly bit-mules, mindlessly obeying Net neutrality by conveying digital files hither and thither without a thought as to their content, but are to be regarded as “Next Generation Broadcasters”:

operators of networks that connect supply with demand in a market for media.

That's important, of course, because it reframes the debate about file-sharing in terms of old technology: radio and TV. It permits the argument to be made that such “broadcasters” have to pay for the privilege of broadcasting all that content – just like the radio and TV broadcasters do.

The paper makes a very good point about the increased capacity networks that are being built:

One of the few studies to be published comes from MoneySupermarket, who found that more than a third of consumers surveyed believe the advent of high-speed, next-generation broadband services would encourage greater piracy and make it easier to illegally download content. The report concluded that: ‘Illegal downloading is already a big problem for the likes of the music and film industries ... with superfast broadband packages set to become commonplace, the problem seems likely to get worse.’

I think that's true, but the analysis dismisses too easily the main reason for this:

Perhaps, like iTunes, these legal venues could increase the range of content on offer, but this increase comes at a high cost when already at a significant disadvantage to “free”.

That's a vicious circle: music companies won't offer more content to compete with free, unauthorised sites because it would cost too much, which means that there won't be so much authorised content as unauthorised, which means that people will continue to be forced to opt for unauthorised downloads, which music companies aren't willing to compete with.

The report even mentions iTunes, which backs up this view: for once iTunes made available most of the content previously only found on unauthorised sites, it started raking the money in. And yet the report chooses to ignore this rare data point, and stick with its circularity – the reason being, it has a Cunning Plan. The ISPs – sorry, Next Generation Broadcasters – must pay:

If changes in the scale of unlicensed media can be measured, we can put a price on this spillover to bridge the value gap. Simply stated, at some date a price would be placed on the indexed measure of unlicensed media on ISP networks. If at a later date the measure of infringement increases, the value transferred (from ISP to rightsholders) would increase accordingly.

Conversely, were the measure of infringement to decrease, the amount transferred would decrease accordingly. The options for pricing such spillovers should be the subject of further research.

They should indeed: I think this is a splendid idea – if we could make just one tiny tweak.

For this to be fair, we must of course make sure that we capture all the effects of unauthorised file sharing so that its true economic effect is measured. That is, we shouldn't be measuring anything so crude and vague as the flow of allegedly unauthorised copyright materials across a network. After all, it's impossible to say whether some of that flow might be permissible uses, and then there's the question of whether people would have bought the equivalent content etc.

Instead, what needs to be ascertained is the knock-on economic effects of that file-sharing in the *real world*. And of course, one very important aspect that has to be included in that is the fact that those who share files buy more, not less, music. As Mike Masnick explains through a splendid series of links:

Study after study after study after study after study after study has shown the exact opposite -- noting that people who file share tend to be bigger music fans, and are more likely to spend on music.

So I think we should try out this report's suggestion that ISPs should pay for the consequences of their users' actions – provided the recorded industry pays the ISPs if it should turn out (as those six reports linked to by Masnick might suggest) that file sharing actually *increases* the sales of recorded music. What could be fairer than that?

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

27 March 2009

Why Everyone Hates the PRS

Another classic post from Mike Masnick about the absurdities our current copyright regime visits upon us:

PRS has now threatened a woman who plays classical music to her horses in her stable to keep them calm. She had been turning on the local classical music station, saying that it helped keep the horse calm -- but PRS is demanding £99 if she wants to keep providing such a "public performance." And it's not just a one-off. Apparently a bunch of stables have been receiving such calls.

That's pathetic enough, but it's Masnick's parting shot that really struck me:

The group seems to believe that playing music in almost any situation now constitutes a public performance and requires a licensing fee. You just know they're salivating over the opportunity to go after people playing music in their cars with the windows down.

Because you know what? I bet the PRS is really considering how to do this.

Follow me on Twitter @glynmoody

04 August 2008

Coming Down Hard - in Favour of Downloads

A study about downloading finds:

Music companies need to stop resisting and accept that illegal downloading is a fact of 21st-century life

...

"The expectation among rights holders is that in order to create a success story, you must reduce the rate of piracy," Garland said. "We've found that is not the case."

The authors of the study argue that music rights holders need to find "new ways" and "new places" to generate income from their music, rather than chasing illegal downloads – for example, licensing agreements with YouTube or legal peer-to-peer websites. In other words, they ought to do the musical equivalent of giving away free ice-cream and selling advertising on the cones.

So far, so boring - I and others have been writing this stuff far ages. Except for one tiny detail: the study comes not from deranged bloggers like me, or crypto-communists bent on underming the entire capitalist system, but was conducted

by the MCPS-PRS Alliance and Big Champagne, an online media measurement company.

In other words, *their own research* shows that their *fight* is hopeless. Will they listen? Don't hold your breath....