Featured Bloggers - Friday February 8, 2008 - 1 Comment
RIAA chief encourages consumers, telecoms to shoot themselves in the face.
RIAA boss Cary Sherman is in a tough spot. He heads the trade organization for a industry whose business model evolved to solve the problems of a world in which distribution was difficult, a world in which the big music labels were actually needed in order to get consumers the music that they wanted. That world is now gone, and Cary is working as hard as he can to make it clear to everyone that the companies of the RIAA are out of their element, that they do not understand the technologies driving the change in their business model and so they are doomed to endlessly attempt to stuff the internet genie back into its bottle. There is simply no room in the new, democratized production-distribution paradigm for players whose businesses depend on solving a problem that no longer exists.
In this video from the State of the Net conference in DC this past week, Cary runs down a list of possible ways to make it difficult to distribute music on the Internet again. Beginning with the “voluntary filtering” at the carrier level that AT&T is proposing (more on why that is a horrible idea for AT&T in a moment) Cary seems thrown off balance when confronted with a question on encryption. Doesn’t simple encryption defeat carrier content filtering? (yes, it does) The software solution he proposes in response actually listens to the analog audio output of the machine it is installed on and stops copyrighted works from being played out! Internet radio, anyone? Burned CD’s? Soundtracks to movies? Actually, Cary’s response is so poorly thought out I’m not at all sure he knew what he was going to say before it came out of his mouth. At one point, struggling for a reason that consumers might pollute their machines with software that would cripple them and expose their owners to litigation, Cary suggests bundling it with antivirus software. Yeah - I know lots of antivirus companies with marketshare who would just _love_ to offer that to their customers.
Putting encryption aside for a moment, if AT&T does hold hands with the RIAA and voluntarily filter content for copyrighted works, it may put itself in some serious legal trouble. This article from Tim Wu at Slate discusses some of the issues with the violations to Safe Harbor that voluntary filtering would raise. Essentially, by admitting that it can filter some content, AT&T probably exposes itself to litigation for carrying any of the copyrighted or obscene work that travels over its networks.
Traveling this road with the RIAA is unhealthy for everyone who comes along for the ride. Consumers are definitely too smart to put themselves in this kind of danger in numbers large enough to solve the RIAA’s problem; we’ll see if the telecoms turn out to have a similar instinct for self-preservation. Verizon, for one, has announced that it will sit this one out.
Comments
One Response to “RIAA chief encourages consumers, telecoms to shoot themselves in the face.”seth February 14th, 2008 11:17 am
I do agree with your viewpoint that the industry is behind the
times, and that as head of the RIAA, Sherman is in a very tough
spot. He’s basically screwed no matter what. However to truly
objectively argue this topic, one must try to sympathize with both
sides, the record industry and the consumer. We have come to a
point where everyone knows there is a problem, the money is not
flowing like it used to, but it is legally impossible to hold any
group responsible. The ISPs could filter their content, but they
would be violating the Safe Harbor Act. The RIAA has tried suing
the actual downloaders, but there was, and is, an obvious massive
public backlash. Many point out that this will keep innovation at
the forefront and force the industry to shed its historically
inefficient business model and start pricing and delivering more
competitively. It is undisputed however that anyone who downloads a
file protected by copyright is infringing Copyright law. The
severity of this infringement and necessary consequences are
debatable, but not the legality of the issue. We cannot hold a
double standard for the consumer and the corporations. It’s one way
or the other, something’s gotta give; we can change the copyright
law to have a more broad fair use clause, or we need the illegal
activity to stop. Until one of these happens, no innovation will be
able to counteract the feeding frenzy of free consumption. If
you’re livelihood is based around making records, you may not be so
enthusiastic about protecting the illegal activities practiced by
your previous consumer base. Think about this: Music consumers take
it upon themselves to decide that they can start taking ipods for
free from apple stores. When apple sues the thieves there is a
massive public backlash against apple. All the security officers
say they don’t want to take any responsibility because they just
watch the store, not the products within it. Does apple start
giving away their iPods because no one wants to pay anymore? Do
they develop something better? Or do we change theft laws? If on
levy breaks, everyone gets wet.