Mandelson enjoys record industry day out; sings record industry song

How lovely for Lord Mandelson to have a day trip out to the music industry PR establishment, The Brits School. Once again, he's taken the opportunity to try and normalise the idea that private companies should have the power to demand people are thrown off the internet:

“Downloading somebody’s work without paying for it – whether it be music, film or computer games – is not a victimless act. It poses a genuine threat to our creative industries and to the livelihoods of talented, hard-working people striving to get a foothold in them. It’s essential that the voice of young artists is also heard,” he said.

“In the end this problem will be solved not simply by new laws but by new approaches to doing business. We believe that temporary account suspension as a last resort, in the most serious cases, is worth considering to allow these new business models to develop.”

The mention of new approaches to doing business is welcome - because, when your business has changed beyond recognition and the market price of your basic product has fallen to almost zero, that's what you have to do. The banging the drum of the "temporary" suspension - and will we ever get to see a suggestion of what 'temporary' might mean? - suggests that the message hasn't really got through.

Do I need to run through again the arguments why downloading a file might actually be victimless act? (Mainly, because there's no direct correlation between an unpaid download and a lost sale.) Do I need to run through again why it's just possible that upholding a four-company cartel throttling the access to the marketplace might not be the best way to give artists a chance to be heard? Why filesharing can offset some of the skewing of the market in favour of the Big Four?

It's forgiveable that Lily Allen waffles and pops when talking about filesharing - as I've said before, however wrong she might be, she's at least engaged with the process. But Mandelson is supposed to understand this sort of thing, and he's making the policy - and yet he gives no indication he's thought about this any further than reading through a discussion paper, funded by the intellectual property industry, over a good lunch, also funded by the intellectual property industry.

The new justice, same as the old justice

While Sonia Sotomayor's proposed elevation to the US Supreme Court is refreshing for a few reasons, it's unlikely to herald much of a new attitude in copyright cases. Web Pro News' Jason Lee Miller points out what Ms Sotomayor's previous life included:

Those currently making, prosecuting, and interpreting intellectual property laws have a clear historical record of siding with Big Content. Sotomayor’s most notable decision as a judge regarding the digital copyright issue involved freelance writers versus Big Content publishers like the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and Newsday. Freelance writers were peeved that their work, which was contracted for one-time print publishing, was being stored in online databases for use on publication websites.

Sotomayor sided with Big Content by interpreting the law in their favor. An appeals court would later overturn her decision, saying that the publications needed to negotiate for digital rights. The appellate decision was upheld by the Supreme Court. It might be unfair to say Sotomayor would bring a pro-Big Content viewpoint to the Supreme Court based on her anti-counterfeit work for Fendi, but her judicial history might suggest otherwise.

It's another sign that, while Obama and his campaign might have embraced the power of the internet to challenge the status quo, now he's in The White House, he's much more interested in shoring up that quo.

Copyright "kills innovation", say economists

Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine of Washington University have just published a book, Against Intellectual Monopoly, which suggests that far from driving a knowledge-based economy, copyright (and patent law) actually drags the economy down:

"From a public policy view, we'd ideally like to eliminate patent and copyright laws altogether," says Levine, John H. Biggs Distinguished Professor of Economics. "There's plenty of protection for inventors and plenty of protection and opportunities to make money for creators. It's not that we see this as some sort of charitable act that people are going to invent and create things without earning money. Evidence shows very strongly there are lots of ways to make money without patents and copyright."

Levine and Boldrin point to students being sued for 'pirating' music on the internet and AIDS patients in Africa dying because they cannot afford expensive drugs produced by patent holders as examples of the failure of the current system. Boldrin, the Joseph Gibson Hoyt Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences and Chair of the economics department says, "Intellectual property is in fact an intellectual monopoly that hinders rather than helps the competitive free market regime that has delivered wealth and innovation to our doorsteps."

The pair are realistic - they're not expecting to argue the rules out of existence - but hope that they can shift a debate to a point where intellectual property law starts, slowly, to reflect its original purpose, of stimulating inventiveness, rather than smothering it with monopoly. Good luck with that, guys.

Government buries three strikes

The music industry's dream of people being banished from the internet if they're caught downloading music without the correct licences is fading fast. David Lammy, Intellectual Property Minister, has told The Times it ain't gonna happen:

Mr Lammy, who has begun a big consultation entitled Developing a Copyright Agenda for the 21st Century, said that there was a big difference between organised counterfeiting gangs and “younger people not quite buying into the system”. He said: “We can't have a system where we're talking about arresting teenagers in their bedrooms. People can rent a room in an hotel and leave with a bar of soap - there's a big difference between leaving with a bar of soap and leaving with the television.”

He said he hoped the memorandum of understanding would mean that the Government did not have to apply “the heavy hand of legislation”.

Music industry figures said they were disappointed by Mr Lammy's comments. One senior figure said: “The relative cost of stealing a bar of soap from an hotel might be small, but if it came to seven million people nicking the soap each year, which is what we have in the music industry, I'm sure that hotel chain would do something about it.”

Actually, the soap metaphor doesn't work - the cost of that small basket of toiletries is factored in to the cost of the room. And once you've opened the bar of soap, it's not like you can leave it to be used by the next person along. I think Lammy and the unnamed senior figure are thinking of towels, aren't they?

Interesting that the "senior figure" isn't confident enough to put his name to his thoughts.

The RIAA believe student's brains aren't fully formed

Don Reisinger over at CNet's Digital Home is carrying an interview with the RIAA's spokeperson Cara Duckworth, giving her a chance to explain why a group of multinational companies feels the need to sue students to protect their industry. Some of Cara's responses are worth close inspection:

It was becoming clearer that despite cool new legal services and the ongoing educational efforts, too many students--some of music's biggest fans--were getting their music illegally and learning the wrong lessons about stealing and the law.

Hey, kids, won't you use our cool new legal services?

It might occur to you, were you in a business, to ask why it is that these Fonzie-cool services weren't enough on their own to stop people filesharing. Not the RIAA, though - they reach for lawsuits.

Not for their own sakes, though: it's a moral case. It's stealing and it's wrong. They just wanted to remind people about the law.

There had to be a deterrence factor involved so that individuals knew that along with personal consequences (i.e., viruses, spyware infiltrating hard drive) there would also be legal consequences to engaging in illegal downloading behavior.

Good lord, 2007 and they're still hoping that saying 'ooh, you might get a computer VIRUS' is going to have an effect on people's behaviour. And it's a bit rich for the RIAA to be all concerned about spyware popping up on computers, after Sony's little rootkit debacle.

The broader problem, of course, is that clearly there isn't a deterrence factor at all - the lawsuits have, by nature of their cost, been so far and few between people who share files tend to view the chances of a letter from the RIAA in the same way that people who fly think about hijacking: it'd be unpleasant, but it's hardly likely to happen.

Bringing lawsuits was by no means our first choice, but a necessary step we had to take.

It's hard to say what they were doing retaining all those lawyers if they weren't using lawsuits as a first option - perhaps they'd all come round for a game of parchesi and, since they were there...

Cara, you'll note, doesn't list what the options which were first choice were. It's probably true, though, that the lawsuits did become necessary, but only because the RIAA's wrongheaded strategy, of setting themselves at war with their customers, had no other place to go. Filesharers effectively called the RIAA's bluff, and the RIAA is left, lumbered with this unpopular, expensive, failing strategy.

Digital Home then asks why the RIAA were targeting college students:

[C]ollege students have reached a stage in life when their music habits are crystallized, and their appreciation for intellectual property has not yet reached its full development.

So, in a turnaround from everything you've ever expected, the RIAA believe that your music habits when you reach college have got to a point where they will never change again, but your ideas about stealing are "underdeveloped".

Yes, let's just look at that again: I, apparently, should never have moved on from listening to Radio 1 and playing music on tape recorders, because my musical habits would have crystalised when I was at college.

While students are embarking on law degrees all over the US despite their sense of right and wrong not having had a chance to develop yet.

It's not that the RIAA are desperately trying to shore up Warner Music. Oh, no. They're worried about all these kids who don't appreciate intellectual property:

Understanding the value of intellectual property is important to the future job market for many of these students--industries that rely on copyright protection employ more than 11 million workers nationwide and continue to grow.

So, there are 11 million people employed in a growing sector of copyrighted materials. It's not immediately apparent from those statistics that the creative industries are being threatened by on-campus piracy - indeed, it's a growth industry. Perhaps that growth is partly being fuelled by the freer exchange of ideas and information made possible by peer-to-peer networking? Maybe the RIAA should be suing the kids who refuse to use bittorrent - perhaps, you know, they could be UnAmerican.

Duckworth then gets a little odd:

While college students used to be some of music's greatest fans, unfortunately that is no longer the case. I would point you to the evidence of the extensiveness of music theft amongst college campuses from Student Monitor and other market research firms to show why we are focusing some of our efforts on universities.

Is she saying that college kids no longer like music? Or is she merely saying they listen to a lot more than they pay for? Isn't there a subtle difference between being a 'fan' of music and being a person who diligently respects intellectual property rights?

Of course, it's only a record label employee who could see music as being something you're a "fan" of in it's own right. I'm a big fan of music; I've got a tshirt with a treble clef on, and my wallpaper has little notes on it. It's like saying "people used to admire cheese". And it's only a record label employee who would think the only way you can show support for something is by paying money over.

Many of the biggest music fans I know showed their devotion to their favourite bands despite not having very much cash.

Reisinger then asks 'aren't you just bullies'? Apparently not - the problem is their marks keep squealing:

When an individual is caught illegally downloading music, it sometimes happens that the person creates a stir.

So... you're not bullies, then; it's just people complain when you try to sue them for thousands and thousands of pounds.

But if we had sat on our hands and chosen to do nothing about the piracy problem as the music industry was hemorrhaging jobs and lost sales, imagine what the extent of theft would be today and how the legal marketplace would be struggling to gain traction.

Let's imagine... it would be pretty much like today, I'd guess - the legal marketplace has developed alongside a surprisingly huge pile of unpaid downloads. Indeed, the only real difference would have been that the RIAA companies would have a few million quid they no longer have, and their reputation wouldn't be as tarnished.

Not that this RIAA spokesperson is going to admit they're failing, though:

Since we began this initiative, we've seen a P2P problem that once was growing at dizzying speeds essentially flatten out.

An interesting definition of success, then, having the problem which you set out to end not declining but "essentially flattening out".

That might also be because everyone who would like to fileshare has, by now, got on board and there's nowhere for new filesharers to come from.

So, why are you so disliked, asks Don?

Amusingly, the RIAA doesn't believe they are:

I don't agree with the loaded premise of the question. In some online quarters, there may be lots of heat about the tough stands we sometimes must take. But amongst the general public, the favorability ratings of the record industry remain as positive as ever and surpass other forms of entertainment like movie or TV studios.

Aha - so the RIAA is only disliked amongst people who talk about them and - if you confuse 'a cartel of major labels engaged in legal action against young people' with 'the music industry', then apparently "favourability ratings" (whatever they are) show that they're, you know, popular.

Let it be said--the RIAA is much more than lawsuits.

Oh, yes. There's the patronising public 'education' campaigns and the lobbying, too.

Stefani sues

Gwen Stefani, or the part of her organisation that deals with the fashion designs, is suing Forever 21, who they claim have ripped off the LAMB line.

Obviously, they need to protect their intellectual property so they can sort out some sort of payment to the teenage Japanese girls whose ideas most of the broad themes were in the first place.

Respect for intellectual property rights

A young couple sit enjoying a drink in a pub, when they're approached by a singer with a guitar, intent on serenading them. Their delight at this charming treat turns quickly, though, as they realise the song is detailing the weakness of the bloke - his girlfriend, having thus discovered the reality of her boyfriend's dark side, storms off, and the man is left sitting, looking shifty, as his shame continues to be detailed by the musician.

So it is that the movie industry is currently attempting to teach us to be ashamed of ourselves if we buy cheap movies through the cautionary tale of 'Knock off Nigel'. The message of respecting the intellectual property of others might be a little stronger, though, if the whole idea hadn't been stolen from the Mexican Pot Noodle advert from a couple of years back.

It's a knock-off advert,
built on knock-off ideas,
it's a knock-off advert,
built on stolen ideas

Not that Bill Wyman: A conclusion

The attorney who attempted to stop Bill Wyman the journalist using his own name has backed down, sort of.

"We were only worried that people might read an article on music by a Bill Wyman and think that it was an inside account" seems to be the explanation for the outrageous and idiotic demand in the first place. Hmmm. But fair's fair - shouldn't Bill 'stone' Wyman's name - whenever he's doing anything involving writing - also be expected to make it clear that he's not the writer for the Atlanta Jounal-Constitution?

After all, if Rolling Stones fans are now thought to be so mentally enfeebled they can't tell the guy they read in the paper every week from the guy who had a relationship with the thirteen year old Mandy Smith when he was forty seven, isn't there a danger of the reverse happening?

Can an arse be a trademark?

Obviously, it must be distressing for Kylie to believe someone else is cashing in on her arse, but the answer is in her own hands: release a photo of your butt without the airbrushing, love. Then you won't find people using it as something to aspire to. The knock on effect might be to stop a few women feeling inadequate, too.