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This week saw the RIAA gain its first victory in what is proving to be an epic industry war against the global menace of illegal filesharing. In fining Jammie Thomas (will the irony of her name ever carry over the pond?) a whopping $220,000 for 24 of the tracks she made available on the Kazaa network, the industry has issued its most severe warning yet to the worldwide illegal filesharing community: “get your a** to iTunes… or you might be next”.
Looking at this in terms of the classic “carrot vs. stick” paradigm of encouraging behavioural change, then this is one large stick (more of a baseball bat perhaps). And, as the recent MediaDefender email leak furore proves, the industry has a number of ingenious ways to make sure their stick-swings strike the right people.
There can be no doubt that the law places the labels and their representatives in the legal right in instances of copyright infringement on p2p networks. It’s the methods employed by the labels’ hired guns (i.e. MediaDefender) that are causing eyebrows to be raised, so much so that we are now presented with a slightly comical role-reversal, in that the notorious Swedish torrent index site ‘The Pirate Bay’ have launched legal action against the very entertainment firms whose copyrights they are accused of infringing.
MediaDefender it seems, are a crafty bunch. The 700mb of leaked emails revealed not only instances of spyware propagation, but also implicated the company in the operation of a fake video upload service ‘Miivi.com’, designed to lure people into uploading or downloading copyrighted content before unceremoniously busting them for doing so.
All this amounts to bad publicity for the recordings industry and outfits like MediaDefender. Aside from the questionable tactic of suing the customers you hope to market to (pretty much the diametric opposite of the reconnecting that Radiohead have just accomplished), the Miivi affair points to an investigative methodology nearing entrapment.
Everyone knows that Jammie, like many before her, should have taken the out of court settlement option and not attempted to defend a legally indefensible position in a court of law. Still, despite the comfort some feel now that the message has been well and truly banged home, the verdict arguably makes a mockery of the notion of a punishment befitting the crime. Such disproportionate action reinforces a negative public perception labels would do well to avoid, especially when alternative (and arguably more effective) tactics such as forced server take-downs are available.
It matters little that the labels who brought the action under the aegis of the RIAA, are in the moral and legal right. What counts is what consumers think, and, notwithstanding the tabled offer for her to settle out of court, if consumers become mistakenly convinced ‘The Man’ is intent on screwing them, then the negative perception of the business and accompanying attitude that a free-for-all is justified will continue.
As the independent sector and some at majors have steadfastly been saying since 2000, one of the most effective ways of combatting illegal activity is to provide attractive legal alternatives. So we’re delighted to hear of a conference taking place in Reykjavik next week aimed at helping solve the future of music over the Internet. As we’ve said many times before, licensing today’s filesharing activity is a must, and it’s great to see business leaders taking the issue so seriously, with Iceland now being slated as a possible test bed for a future licensed filesharing model.
Another way of combatting illegal activity is to remove the pressures causing it. Just one of the many brilliant aspects of Radiohead’s album release (which even my gran is now telling me about) is that by making the album available to everyone at the same time, the band have neatly removed the 6+ week window where fans hear and read about new music but are unable to legally acquire it.
While removing this interval might solve only a part of the ‘illegal filesharing’ problem, pre-release fileswapping can pose serious problems, and there are tales of whole album releases that have been shelved due to excessive pre-release downloading.
Radiohead proved there are no deep-seated reasons why you have to stick to the conventional system. Think about it, if enough bands of Radiohead’s stature adopted the same strategy of releasing to everyone at the same time, then radio, press and TV would certainly fall into line. It’s a novel idea, but there’s surely no better time for an injection of mould-breaking creativity, so lets hope we see more of it from today’s leading bands, managers and labels.
And if that means less work for the Media Defenders of this world, that may be no bad thing.
Mobile Matters:
On another note, we recently attended the mobile web 2.0 conference, to check out developments on the mobile horizon. You may already have come across Twitter a sort of Facebook that's accessible via mobile? Well the concept of mobile web 2.0 goes beyond that and is about new applications that utilise the particular data that mobiles provide - where you are, how long you've been there and who else is with you. There’s nothing new here – the idea of music services picking up on geographical location has been around for at least 5 years, but it’s encouraging that momentum now appears to be growing. And you can bet that whether it’s a news service for bands playing in your local town or a staggered entry system for people attending a major gig, music will largely drive these services - with hopefully the creators benefiting from ad revenues and the like.
Less cosmic perhaps, but MusicTank will be uncovering the secrets of getting the most from your mobile as part of a two panel event at the end of the month. The session will see some of the mobile industry’s leading lights sharing their tips for using mobile to market your bands and earn revenues – see below for more details.
Editorial by Sam Shemtob & Jon Ramsay
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