The Music Industry’s Favorite Song: Busted

Michael Hedges September 13, 2010 Follow on Twitter

A world record for street singing made the headlines during the German music industry trade fair Popkomm. Singing for ones supper, literally or figuratively, may be the norm for the lesser known artists and performers. Music industry executives and their lawyers have a different tune.

For solutions to the digital challenge the music industry has turned to lawyers and accountants. Major label owners – Sony, Universal, Vivendi and EMI – and trade organization International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) spared no expense lobbying for tougher laws on internet piracy and pursuing prosecutions wherever possible. File sharing websites Napster and Pirate Bay were effectively shut down. Grandmothers and 12 year olds were sued. Strong “three-strikes” laws came into force: HADOPI in France and the Digital Economy Act in the UK over the howls of outrage from internet service providers (ISPs), who incur direct costs from implementation and indirect wrath from customers, and civil libertarians who see creeping invasion of privacy.

Emboldened by the success the music industry opened opportunities for entrepreneurship. Companies sprang up offering cost effective technical solutions for finding people who might be illegally downloading music, videos or games. On behalf of the French music rights collecting organization Société Civile des Producteurs Phonographiques (SCPP), “smart pipes” company Vedicis tested and implemented deep packet inspection (DPI) to identify the IP addresses and block “illegal traffic”. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the United States uses MediaSentry/Safenet.

In a coincidental prologue to Popkomm, a raid coordinated by Belgian authorities (September 7) netted ten individuals for operating illegal file-sharing networks in Belgium, Norway and Sweden. The target was a network operating in 14 countries to illegally distribute movies. A few days earlier (September 4), an individual in Sweden was busted for downloading 6,000 tunes.

“We have received a notification from the music industry’s association and the data provided pointed us to an address outside Östersund (central Sweden),” said Chief Prosecutor Henrik Rasmussen, quoted by radio channel P4. Last year Rasmussen, considered a specialist in intellectual property law after the Pirate Bay prosecution, busted a website owner for linking to video of a hockey match.

Concerned by the length and breadth of issues related to the digital coming-to-age of the creative and artistic industries, the European Commission (EC) DG Internal Markets has been holding a series of stakeholders hearings in advance of a new E-Commerce Directive. Within the EC there are sympathies toward the economic argument (big companies and employment), digital development (the future), creative industries (cultural impact) and civil liberties (privacy). It’s complicated.

In the June 2010 Brussels meeting ISP representatives objected to these deep packet inspection techniques. “An excessive control on the internet could stop the further development of the internet, which will be to the detriment of the society as a whole,” said European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (ETNO) director Michel Bartholomew. “ISPs should not cover the costs of protecting business models of other economic operators.”

“Such measures do not solve the problem of copyright infringement online; they only make them invisible,” offered ISP trade association EuroISPA president Malcolm Hutty. “Technical measures could be ineffective, harmful to the network and could be harmful to innovation.”

Only one in twenty internet downloads are legal, said IFPI’s top anti-piracy cop Jeremy Banks to the committee. Losses from piracy to the Italian music industry, for example, are estimated at €300 million a year.

Logistep, operating in Switzerland, is another DPI robot provider. Or it used to operate in Switzerland.  Siding with privacy concerns, the Swiss Federal Court (Tribunal Fédéral Suisse) (September 8) ruled harvesting IP addresses with the intent to file lawsuits is illegal, reinforcing Swiss law putting data privacy ahead of copyright. IP addresses, said the court, are private data.

“The verdict has far reaching consequences in Europe,” said Switzerland’s data protection czar Hanspeter Thür. “The ruling now sets a clear line against covert investigation through the internet. We welcome this very much.”

IFPI denied having a relationship with Logistep, which said it would move to Germany and continue on its merry way.

Music industry luminaries at Popkomm debated, heatedly at times, copyright in the digital environment. Some were highly critical of using lawyers and prosecutors. Others said stronger laws are necessary.

“The truth is digital technology has driven a panzer division through copyright law,” observed rather indelicately Robbie Williams’ manager Tim Clark. The UK’s Digital Economy Act, he said, is “laughable and unworkable” and “a waster of time.” 

“If 70% of the population are ignoring a law, it’s no longer law. We have to figure out a new way of working with copyright.”

“The debate about the value of intellectual property is still completely open,” said German music industry association Bundesverband Musikindustrie president Dieter Gorny. “On one hand, politicians are always positively euphoric about the huge economic and social value of creative artists. On the other, they do much too little to shelter their economic and cultural importance in the digital world.”

“Politicians should not only keep saying that the internet is not a law-free zone, but finally do something to ensure that something happens.”

Taking aim at music industry executives, broadcaster and music promoter Tim Renner said a “paradigm shift” is necessary. “You can beat your competition only if you are better than the competition.” Renner was Universal Music Germany chairman from 2001 through 2004, after which he formed Motor Entertainment, owner of radio station Motor FM and IPTV channel Motor TV.

This years Popkomm was held at the repurposed Tempelhof Airport, a smaller venue than years before, as part of Berlin Music Week. Last years show was cancelled, economic conditions cited. Complaining about more talk and less music, Deutsche Welle’s Neale Lytollis described the event (September 10) as “yet another corporate bore-fest, sagging under the weight of it own tedium and overdosed on fifteen tons of worthless business cards.”

To qualify for the Guinness World Record, the street singers could only repeat songs once ever four hours. The music business could learn a lot from that.

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