CandidCapital

The music industry needs innovative business and service models to meet the needs of consumers who are fickle, demanding and, unfortunately, used to content that's free - including digital music. Shouldn't the industry be speaking with one voice as legislators tussle over the Digital Economy Bill?

All music free?

I went to the excellent Music 4.5 conference earlier this month. During the afternoon there was a session on investment which came round, inevitably, to the monetization of new digital music services. One member of the panel (I can't remember who) raised the spectre of all digital music becoming free. The panel moderator, Mike Butcher (editor TechCrunch Europe), immediately picked up on the importance, and divisiveness, of this as an issue and turned to the audience with the question "hands up those of you who think digital music will be free". Out of an audience of, I guess, 300 people, 200 or so put their hands up. When Mike asked for supporters of the opposite view, perhaps 30 (including me) put their hands up to say that paid-for digital music has a future.

The industry strikes back

When I was at MIDEM in January, the buzz on the panels was of a fight-back by paid-for music: apparently there had been an 80% decline in unlawful file sharing in Sweden after the Pirate Bay founders had been jailed. Moreover, the French seemed intent on pressing ahead with the "three strikes and you're out" threat to persistent illegal file sharers set out in the HADOPI legislation passed last year and Peter Mandelson seemed to have been converted to including similar measures in draft legislation following the Digital Britain report.

The trough of despair

All of which seems to leave us wallowing in a trough of despair between two polarised views that can be crudely characterised as "lock up the fans" (if they don’t comply with the music industry's view of appropriate use) versus "all music is free".

Digital Economy Bill

Events in the House of Lords in the past few weeks, where the Digital Economy Bill has been under consideration, have been no less polarised - not along party lines but about the alternatives being considered to deal with unlawful file sharing. On the one hand, the government has proposed taking powers to "future proof" the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA) by allowing the Secretary of State to amend the primary legislation to counter future unlawful file sharing techniques. On the other, the Liberal Democrats put forward an amendment (which was adopted by the Lords, but is expected to be undone when the Bill reaches the Commons) which would extend the ability of labels or other rights holders to obtain an injunction obliging ISPs to block access to internet services which, for whatever reason, don't respond to take-down notices about content asserted as unlawful.

MeglaMandy

Now I don’t like the idea of Peter Mandelson, or his successors of whatever political persuasion, having powers to re-define copyright or what constitutes a breach of it. But, I equally dislike the prospect of the labels, or any other rights holder, having easy recourse to blocking injunctions over copyright material where the alleged breach is marginal or the subject of reasonable dispute, especially where the inclination of the ISPs is likely to be comply first and then argue.

Fair use?

It seems to me that the problem is no-one wants to re-visit the outdated CDPA and attempt a wider definition of fair use. Surely it is both equitable and inevitable that fans should have the right to make back-up copies of their music, or hold a copy of a track in a different format for personal use on a different device. Equally, operators of new digital music services which seek to promote the sale of legitimate downloads, should have a fair use right to let fans listen to samples of music that they're considering purchasing without fear of being pursued for royalties on those samples.

Reform CDPA 1988!

Tackling reform of the underlying legislation to bring copyright up to date with the digital age would create a much better platform for creating and enforcing effective measures for countering unlawful file-sharing. The creative industries are far too important to the UK economy and to the daily lives of its citizens for this to be fudged any longer.

It's not all bad

Finally, I'm glad to report that the investment session at Music 4.5 ended when Shivz Dotz, a teenage rapper who had taken part in a start-up panel in the morning, took the microphone and reminded us that Chipmunk had got to No 1 because tens of thousands of people like him are prepared to pay for music.

22 March 2010

This article was originally published as an opinion piece for MusicAlly. Blimp may be connected with Martin Rigby, CEO of Psonar