P2P not legalised in Italy

Seems that tech site Ars Technica slipped up in reporting that Italy had inadvertently legalised peer to peer. Whilst the news has predictably spread like wildfire all over the blogosphere and tech press it is not entirely true. More to come…

more Kevin Kelly

“The odd thing about free technology is that the “free as in beer” part is actually a distraction. As I have argued elsewhere (see my 2002 New York Times Magazine article on the future of music for example) the great attraction of “free” music is only partially that it does not cost anything. The chief importance of free music (and other free things) is held in the second English meaning of the word: free as in “freedom.” Free music is more than piracy because the freedom in the free digital downloads suddenly allowed music lovers to do all kinds of things with this music that they had longed to do but were unable to do before things were “free.” The “free” in digital music meant the audience could unbundled it from albums, sample it, create their own playlists, embed it, share it with love, bend it, graph it in colors, twist it, mash it, carry it, squeeze it, and enliven it with new ideas. The free-ization made it liquid and ‘free” to interact with other media. In the context of this freedom, the questionable legality of its free-ness was secondary. It didn’t really matter because music had been liberated by the free, almost made into a new media. Technology wants to be free, as in free beer, because as it become free it also increases freedom. The inherent talents, capabilities and benefits of a technology cannot be released until it is almost free. The drive toward the free unleashes the constraints on each species in the technium, allowing it to interact with as many other species of technology as is possible, engendering new hybrids and deeper ecologies of tools, and permitting human users more choices and freedoms of use. As a technology grows in abundance and cheapness, it is more likely to find its appropriate niche which it can sustain itself and support other technologies in commodity mode. As technology heads toward the free it unleashes the only lasting thing it can: options and possibilities.”

‘Better than free’

Read this from Kevin Kelly.

It’s a great dynamic - just as your main product goes digital and ubiquitous what you need to add value is more physical world product (concerts, merchandise) and exclusivity/personalisation (getting things first or more inside track).

Now let’s see the future please…

IFPI Digital Music Report 08

The IFPI Digital Music Report 08 calls on the European Union to consider the French approach to ISP responsibilty for copyright infringers and action.

But what the report show more than anytihng is the phenomenal growth in digital content and how the music industry is leading the pack.

Some eye-watering stats include that in 2003 there were approximately 50 legal music services and now there are more than 500 (consolidation will be next then…).  In the same period the value of digital music sales has gone from around US$20m to US$2.9bn.

In comparison with other industries PWC figures show that the music industry is deriving more of its revenue from digital:

Books 2%

Films 3%

Newspapers 7%

Recorded music 15%

For those immersed in the machinations of the legal and illegal consumption of digital music the report probably reports little unfamiliar. But for anyone who wants to get up to speed on the issues at play in the digital music field it is a more than worthy starting point. 

China bends online audio/video market in it’s favour

This article on Yahoo! News reports that the Chinese are struggling to deal with the huge increase in online piracy, purportedly having twice as many cases in 2007 than in 2005 and 2006 together.

It is notable that a senior official said that harsher punishments are required, but on reading on I noticed this which I must have missed last month: 

Last month, the government said that in a bid to curb pornography and politically sensitive online subjects, only state-owned firms would be allowed to apply for licenses to share videos and audio online.

Surely this is exactly the kind of behaviour that is contained in the WTO complaints made last year by the US. Under the guise of requiring censorship of inappropriate material it makes it hard for international firms to break into the domestic market. 

SPFF wakes up

French collecting society SPFF has said it will not tolerate sites using it’s members music without licensing. To this end, about two years after if first became popular, it has filed a suit against RadioBlogClub. Maybe Deezer next? Surely this new crusade has been precipitated by the recent agreement by ISPs to suspend/terminate user accounts of copyright infringers.

The lack of urgency of some of these industry bodies to stick up for the rights of their members beggars belief. It is not impossible that the members were also backwards in coming forward so as not to invite unpopularity with their “consumers”.

Speedy licensing of most services is clearly the best outcome for most parties, with the availability of copyright infringement suits as a strong incentive to talk terms. Better late than never for the content owners that SPFF can be taken seriously as representing the infringement suits threat.

Torrentspy loses case before trial starts!

Digital Music News reports that the MPAA has won a case against Torrentspy since the judge threw out the case on the basis that Torrentspy had been lying under oath and tampering with evidence during the discovery process. Weird one.

Music in China

That long tail chap Chris Anderson has been galavanting around for new ideas and got to China. His blog post about music in China covers the headline points about ringtones and Baidu but links to an article on The Register by a Beijing-based Western A&R guy. A fascinating read it paints a vivid and informed picture of the state of the music industry in China today – the prevalance of recorded music piracy and why, despite millions of music consumers, it is hard to earn money from recorded music and even from 360-degree(esque) deals.

Among other factors:

Today’s China sees single-track, naked MP3s being Bluetoothed, file-shared, emailed, flash-disked, hard-drive-dumped and herded around the digital sphere in complete anonymity. Targeting potential listeners for your band in this scramble of a market is incredibly difficult because, in a great deal of cases, even your potential listener doesn’t know what he or she is listening to.

I wonder how much that happens elsewhere. Ed remains optimistic but it is hard to see how this particular potential market can be converted.

Leaseweb update

Not much reporting on this but most of the public BT indexes did leave Leaseweb by the Dec 1 deadline and most did leave Holland. Holland still hosts a large number of private trackers, with many of them residing at Leaseweb. Still, it appears to show that pressure on an ISP can result in services moving. The content industry faces the challenge of making forced migration a painful  cost of doing business and as such a hurdle to staying in operation. The fallout from this will probably show just how easy it is to move to another country and continue operations.

Anti-piracy trade bodies

The FT reports on rumours that EMI’s new owners might cut back on trade body funding (such as BPI, IFPI, RIAA). Whilst the cutting back on the RIAA may look sensible given EMI’s appalling performance in the US and the RIAA’s hapless performance in dealing with piracy in the US EMI need to consider that they are dealing with a global problem.

Trade bodies can give their members useful economies of scale not available to individual members. In something like the fight against content piracy most companies share the same targets.

Guy Hands wants EMI to be a 360 degree music company (or something ) but at the moment he has only recorded music and publishing. If he turns his back on the united method of fighting online piracy he further risks one of his core asset types before he has grown other revenue streams. Dangerous.