p2pnet - rss feed: Record labels threaten ISPs
p2p news / p2pnet: Internet service providers may soon find themselves in court unless they cave in to record label demands that ISPs become cartel cops, acting against customers believed to be using the p2p networks.
The latest Big Four disinformation puff piece spells bad news for ISPs, we suggested yesterday. "Increased pressure will be brought to bear on them" and, hence, "national judicial systems to try to force providers to reveal the identities of customers so the Big Four can try to turn them back into being fully compliant consumers," we wrote.
"Specifically, the music business needs support for Digital Rights Management, which is the key enabler of digital music services allowing new and flexible uses by consumers; it also needs more cooperation from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in protecting music from piracy on their networks," said the cartel’s IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industries).
Now, "Record companies and internet service providers could be on a collision course as music executives continue to be frustrated by illegal downloading of music," says the Financial Times.
"It’s been a year since I asked for (the ISP’s) cooperation, and I’ve effectively had zero response,” it has IFPI boss John Kennedy saying.
This is the same Kennedy who in the IFPI ‘report’ claims, "legitimate digital music business is steadily pushing back on digital piracy," also stating in the same document, "Illegal activity on peer-to-peer networks has stayed static in the last year".
And in a BBC interview he said his employers, cartel owners EMI, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and Sony BMG, were, "winning the war but we haven’t won the war" against "piracy". He went on, "I would love to be sitting here telling you that it had gone down …"
With that in mind, he’s threatening ISPs with court actions unless they fall in with Big Four demands.
"Mr Kennedy said he would continue to try and negotiate with the ISPs, but said that as a last resort, he could turn to litigation if the internet groups continued to turn a blind eye to illegal music downloading by their users," says the FT, going on:
"He said he wanted ISPs to send out warnings to customers who downloaded music illegally and then cut them off from using their services if they refused to stop. ‘If it’s easy enough to cut them off if they don’t pay their bills, it’s easy enough to cut them off if they infringe copyright laws,’ said Mr Kennedy, adding that the government should also increase their efforts to protect intellectual property."
Also See:
bad news for ISPs - IFPI file sharing report, January 19, 2006
Financial Times - Music groups and ISPs at odds over illegal downloading, January 19, 2006
pushing back on digital piracy - IFPI on p2p file sharing, January 19, 2006
January 20th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
I’m sure it’s not lost on the record companies that the easiest way for ISP’s to do this is to shut down any and all P2P activity — legal or illegal.
What a nice situation: no more legal competition for the record companies.
January 20th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
” ‘If it’s easy enough to cut them off if they don’t pay their bills, it’s easy enough to cut them off if they infringe copyright laws,’ said Mr Kennedy, adding that the government should also increase their efforts to protect intellectual property.” ”
1) Why is the IFPI’s archaic business model failure an ISP concern? Are the people who look after the roads responsible for making Fords sell better? (Not a shot at Ford, just an example).
2) It’s like telling GM ” you can reposes cars from people who don’t pay their financing, so you should you reposes cars from people who speed”
3) Copy rights are an agreement between the people and creators/artists to allow the public access to works, but also allow the creator/artist get income so they can continue to do what they do. So government, as the peoples representative, should do what it’s suppose to do; act in the best interest of the people. That would be allowing copy right for LIMITED time, i.e. until the cost of creation + reasonable amount where recovered, not to help some multinational corp. rake in the cash.
4) Funny that as intermediate companies that screwed over both the creators/artists and the consumer, for years, they are turning to other intermediate companies (MS, Apple, any DRM company). I mean they must see what is coming: The ‘new’ intermediate companies who own and control the ‘new’ means of distribution, will do to the ‘old’ middle men what the ‘old’ middle men did to the creators/ artists and consumers. They will be the ‘new’ middle men and in turn screw the ‘old’ middle men, the creators/artists and the consumers.
January 20th, 2006 at 10:16 pm
Who will pay for the ISP to check billions of bytes a month? How could they breach privacy laws to do this? Why would they give up their “carrier” status for the media cartels?
Of course this will never work and shows the ignorance of the media cartels. Are they going to be asking the mail to check the contents of every envelope, or the phone companies to check the contents of every call?
This is just the usual noise from the cartels with no substance and displaying their ridiculous “spoilt child” stance.
January 20th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
Dear Mr. Kennedy:
ISPs (at least in the US) are NOT required to cooperate with you, your organization, or similar organizations UNLESS you bring them specific, credible evidence of a specific copyright violation. ISPs are specifically exempt from being held accountable for their customer’s behavior on line. It is not the ISPs job to be the copyright police for you. It’s unlikely they currently have staff trained in the nuances of copyright law, nor is it likely they wish to invest in the training required to raise the skill level sufficiently. Care to chip in to pay for that?
Contrary to what you might believe, and what you are trying to convince politicians to believe, not every file that is shared on filesharing networks is a copyright violation. The entire class of files known as ‘fonts’ have been declared by the US Copyright Office to be ineligible for copyright on the basis that no one can copyright the alphabet or any portion of it. The font names can be trademarked, but the actual typefaces are public domain.
How is anyone from an ISP, or from the IFPI, or the RIAA, or your lackies at MediaSentry, et al going to know if the file ‘yyj327x.rar’ is going to decompress into .mp3 files of the current #1 album or .mp4 files of someone’s poodle acting like a nutball? Even if the file in question turns out to be Dark Side of the Moon, who is to determine conclusively that it’s infringement? If I own said album, I’m entitled to create a copy of it for backup and archival purposes. Furthermore, I get to decide how to create the backup copy, not you or your cartel brethern.
And please, don’t whip out your copy of the Grokster decision and start beating some ISP CEO about the head with it. Grokster was about products. “Use our PRODUCT to connect to your favorite filesharing network. See OUR partners’ ads. Receive OUR spam, etc.” ISPs are providing purely a service. For the most part, they don’t care what kind of computer you have, what web browser you use, what type or size of monitor you have, or if you type 170 words a minute or barely get by with one finger.
Yes, Mr. Kennedy, it’s very easy for an ISP to determine if someone has not paid their bill and terminate their service. Paying a bill is a discrete and deterministic activity. Either accounts payable has gotten $32.47 from Mr. User or they have not. They don’t need to snoop on his activities on line to determine this. The logic contained in your assertion is a classic fallacy known as “affirming the consequence”, whereby the consequence is being true erroneously implies the antecedant must also be true, when in fact if the consequence is true, it matters not what the antecedant is. (There is a related fallacy called “denying the antecedant.” See: http://www.wwco.com/religion/believe/believe_02.html for a summary of these types of fallacies.)
What if instead of spending your time attempting to coerce and threaten ISPs into eradicating filesharing (including the legitimate kind,) you invested that time in developing, testing, and deploying a workable new business model for digital content distribution over a very Wide Area Network with little in the way of centralized control? Wouldn’t that feel more constructive and productive than just paying lawyers to file lawsuits that have a tendency to explode (Chan, Nelson, et al) in very messy and embarrassing ways?
–TurboGeek
January 20th, 2006 at 11:33 pm
If they do this, it will violate our rights… in a pretty major way, and I’m sure many of us wont stand for it.
I can use the “p2p networks”, for other reasons besides downloading their crappy music…
January 21st, 2006 at 5:34 pm
You are not alone.
January 21st, 2006 at 7:39 pm
The thing is that the IFPI is based in England. I hav no idea what their laws are like over there, but I’m glad that I live in the US. At least here the ISPs can legaly tell the RIAA to go pound sand.
January 22nd, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Well said my friend
January 22nd, 2006 at 4:40 pm
They are getting screwed by buying all of this DRM (which doesn’t work).
It’s quite funny really, they are spending a fortune on something that will get cracked inside of 2 days.