Last month the BBC news website reported that six major UK ISPS had reached an agreement with the music industry to tackle content piracy by monitoring and sending out warning letters to suspected illegal file sharers. Given other similar recent proposals (e.g. 3 strikes rule), and the dismal failure of media DRM, one can't help but ask the question: is this merely a transition from DRM to "ISP-RM" and will it meet a similar fate?
This above voluntary agreement is centred around a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), drawn up by the UK Government department for Business and Enterprise Regulatory Reform (BERR), and will involve mass mailing of notification letters to suspect illegal file sharers (including download and upload), and subsequent bandwidth throttling for "hardcore" or persistent file sharers. Now this is all well and good until we start to think about the practicality and implications for various stakeholders (i.e. whose interests are best served by this initiative) based on the following top-of-head analysis of desirable outcomes:
Hmmm..., everyone wins it would appear; but cynics might suggest that some stakeholders stand to win more than others (as usual) and they won't be far wrong. However, the real question should be about which stakeholder group/s has the most power to derail the whole arrangement, and to what extent they have they been consulted / involved in this initiative.
And now a word from the Cylons:
On lighter note, I think the Cylons may have the best, albeit device oriented, philosophy and explanation / clarification of the problems with DRM and other digital content control mechanisms, as shown on the YouTube video.
I look forward to your comments on this one!
About the author
Jude Umeh is a member of the UK's Sector Consulting Group in Capgemini's global Telecom Media and Entertainment (TME) community. His areas of expertise include: music, media and digital rights management; and he contributes to thought leadership development and delivery of solutions and services to the stakeholders in these fields. Jude is the author of The World Beyond Digital Rights Management.
Comments (4)
Leave CommentI often wonder where the bean-counters of the Recording Industry Association of America get their figures from. How would they possibly estimate how many people would buy how many CDs from which artist? Their big ally Metallica, a band whose record sales have been constantly decreasing after the outstanding success of their "Black Album" - did they ever give a thought to the fact that people do not buy much of their stuff since then because they do not appreciate the change in musical direction that band went under? Let's face it - 5 yrs average waiting time for an album doesn't automatically grant astronomic sales figures. How about all the people who can not afford to buy a lot of CDs because they have to account for constantly rising bills? With a recession lurking at the door, eager to burst through it any week, where would many of us possibly take the money from to splash out like that, given the price of a new CD at HMV primarily, and also at Zavvi and even Tesco? Many people (me included) go and buy 2nd hand CDs - but that won't make the RIAA and their European allies a single penny more. The next thing might be that 2nd hand CD sales will be prohibited. If anyone's going to derail this, it's the end consumer - the classic milk cow. Copyright infringement in bigger style began in the 70s - funny enough, that whole decade was haunted by recession.
Report Comment
An important point which has been overlooked is that the arrangement between the BPI and ISPs will mean that it is bill payers and not file sharers who are to receive scary letters and ultimately be punished. I understand the technical difficulty of distinguishing between the two but there is ample scope here for innocent people to be targetted by ISPs. Unless ISPs can resolve this issue then ISP-RM is going to be very unpopular once the public reacts to false accusations of file sharing. I am a former BCS member myself, and we all know about the unsecured wireless networks in homes around the country, don't we? How on earth will ISPs target the real file sharers? I wrote more on this subject myself, the address is: http://talkjack.wordpress.com/2008/07/27/uk-home-bill-payers-to-receive-threatening-letters-due-to-allegations-from-the-bpi/
Report Comment
When is the entertainment industry going to realise that they are fighting a lost war and that they're the only ones to blame? By inundating people with an ever increasing number of new "artists" and B-movies, they have commoditised their own business... why would you buy anything from them that you would discard/replace in a short time and that you can get for free somewhere else? It's not even a question of money, it's a question of availability and focus. Today the BPI and MPAA are trying to cut on availability, and ISPs pretend to help (though it's probably their main selling point for broadband). Tomorrow the genius coders behind peer-to-peer applications will develop new ways of cloaking (strong encryption anyone?) the trafic between peers. When is the entertainment industry going to focus on their core business, providing valuable, enjoyable entertainment?
Report Comment
Agreed. Seems the consumer has the power to derail this process, but will they do so, and even if they do, will the content industry listen to them yet again? Remains to be seen.
Report Comment
Post a comment