By Lisa Ansell / @LisaAnsell
The Digital Economy Bill was supposed to provide the ‘backbone’ for a future in which the internet will become even more central to all aspects of our life and our industry. Yet the rapid progression of this bill has prompted accusations of "sidestepping democracy", suppression of free speech, and legislating against the British public to suit the interests of a few large companies. A matter of weeks away from one of the closest-fought general elections I can remember, my question is: what effect will this bill have?
The internet is a tool for communication; it has changed the way we communicate beyond imagination. Using digital formats, we can share data quickly, easily, and with a more people than ever before. It is simultaneously a marketers dream, and nightmare – you can reach a massive audience, cheaply and quickly, but it is much more difficult to exercise control over what that market sees, hears, or says.
If we take the music industry as a case in point the means to make, market, and distribute the commodity are now in everyone’s hands. Releasing a record no longer means finding the holy grail of a label who will sign you up; gaining access to radio playlists is no longer the only way get your music heard.
There has been a proliferation of new record labels, making a living in a market which they were previously excluded from. New tools like Soundcloud, MySpace, Twitter, and the plethora of digital download sites offer opportunities for collaboration, distribution and marketing that were previously held by just a few companies.
There has been a dramatic increase in gig and festival ticket sales, and the music industry has a vibrancy and diversity that has been lacking for a long time. Some companies have grasped the opportunity that this massive new market has provided, and some have not. Discussions around these changes, and objections to this bill, always focus on one issue: filesharing.
In one corner, we have the major record labels saying filesharing is theft that has "cost" billions; in the other we have the rest of the market showing that they don’t agree. That cost includes the death of a retail market, which would seem an inevitable part of all downloading, not just illegal downloading. Music is downloaded (legally and illegally) on a scale that record sales never matched and there is evidence to show that consumers who download and share the most music are also the people who are buying it. Some companies want to grasp the opportunities the internet gives, but not adjust to its challenges.
Commercially speaking, criminalising millions of your customers is not likely to have long term benefits. It is also clear that the difficulties major labels are facing are not just a result of illegal downloading.
Practically, this clause is unlikely to have the desired effect. Shields for IP addresses which help downloaders evade detection are being released daily. Every attempt to tackle the ‘problem’ of illegal downloads, has gone the same way. A change in technology, a change in website – the market decides, and downloading continues.
There is no doubt a debate needs to be had about how notions of copyright should change to reflect this new market, but no matter how much the major labels lobby, there isn’t consensus even within the music industry.
This bill is unlikely to help the industry reach that consensus, especially not if the way it is pushed through is seen to restrict necessary debate. The bill which is supposed to provide the structure for Britain’s digital future, is currently being opposed by the internet service provders who are central to that future – not because they are worried about their profits, but because they don’t want to police their customers in this way, especially not on the basis of an assumption that has not been proved. Consumers are worried that this clause could have serious effects on their lives. Consumers vote.
Is this clause so important that it is necessary to push it through at any cost? Is it really wise to have this bill become an easily recalled symbol of Labour’s record on civil liberties, and a ‘sidestepping’ of democratic process? This close to this election?
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Mind you, it's all irrelevant as home taping killed all music in the eighties. We know because the record labels told us.
Technology is making big record labels obsolete. The free market should be allowed to run its course and see the real restructuring driven by genuine consumer led market forces our creative industries need. In fact Britain has the potential to become a world innovator in this. Last years Christmas Number 1 was a very basic example of what can happen however the big labels still have plenty of money in the bank from the days when we were forced to buy CDs and they won't go without a fight.
They are pumping millions into a massive lobbying operation to persuade the Government and Parliament to bailout their industry from being destroyed by music fans. The very same people who put them in the position they are in. If we want to strike a blow for our creative industries and create a real revival of British music, not just the manufactured nonsense they want to throw at us the Government should ignore the multi billion pound special interests and allow the grassroots driven forces of real music fans and the free market to decide the fate of the record industry!
They have always liked the vested interest of a few. Take for example CDWoW - back then a bright start up who realised that UK CD buyers were subsidising the rest of the world. They started buying and distributing CD from Hong Kong where the record companies were more than happy to sell UK artists at just £1 per CD. This was when HMW was at its most insane and trying to charge £13.99 for a CD.
Obviously the BPI stepped in because they didn't like people like me buying huge volumes of CDs at £4.99. Vested interest. They wanted to still keep the UK as its little cash cow.
Fast forward to 2010 and nothing really changes.
Today though the record industry and its compliant partners like itunes is fleecing the UK public through legal internet downloads. Remember no artwork to print, no jewel case, no CD to press. Just to really rub your nose in it they let you download it at a sub par quality level. For the privelage they charge you 79p per track -the same price as if you bought the actual physical CD on Amazon. What a wheeze eh?
No wonder the industry is pressuring the government to force through this piece of lunacy - yet another way for corporates that feed us utter crap most of the time can continue to fleece its young demographic.
No wonder downloading illegally is so common - the record industry deserves nothing better.
PS - I was sent a youtube link to a bands video last week (ok go) - It was rather wonderful so I downloaded a couple of tracks to see if it was a one off. It wasn't. So I bought all three albums (from the US). Oh the band are no longer with EMI. Produced on a Indi label. This makes the purchase all the more sweeter.
Or £25 if they happened to put a sticker marked "Import" on the case. This was what led me to first go and download something specific from Napster - before that, it was just looking for interesting tracks and remixes that you couldn't get in the shops.
I went to every major record shop in town and found the album (Sublime, self-titled) in every one. Each was clearly stocking it and not just ordering on customer request. It might have taken the best part of a week to locate and download each track on Napster/dial-up, but it was still better than paying an extra £10-12 for a small sticker on the case.
I could put it down to 'technical errors' or something more nefarious ?
Switching off FM is daft because DAB is poor reception in many areas and in any case hasn't any actual reasoning behind it. No-one else has adopted DAB
And in any case, the future of radio will be via the internet and it is THAT technology which needs development
As a content provider I have had to change how I make my income. It has not been easy. When I read the original Digital Britain paper from Lord Carter last year I found that there was nothing in it for me as a content provider, so I could not see how the bill could possibly be in my interest.
Mike, you are absolutely correct. There is also the added problem regarding enforcability in that anyone who knows anything about IP technology will simply use Proxies or something like the Tor network to hide the true IP addresses. So, whilst the little man will occasionally be hit, the big time pirates will simply ignore this mad legislation and carry on as before.
Universal
Sony
Warner
EMI
and only supporting Indie labels & Indie bands.
I`ve been supporting the indies for over a year now, and honestly it`s broadened my horizons music-wise.
No more commercial pap spewed out by plastic bands. Try it, you`ll enjoy it.
If I really like a band I tend to pay extra for a CD to show my support.
Matt Stockman (Sharabang Records) Indie Label:
"No matter what industry you're in, to thrive you must firstly listen to your customers. For Sharabang Music it's about listening to music lovers, how music is now consumed and adapting to this to offer genuine choices. What we're actually doing by offering music fans a choice is trying to put the value back into recorded music by diversifying the product range and offering far more than can simply be sent over the internet."
http://www.indieoma.com/commentaries/johnny-others-matt-stockman-sharabang-records-interview?display=center
Something the Big Four still haven`t learned.
Once Mandys Law is passed an offshore VPN will be the way to go, for around £30pm for a good connection.
Just one example, Lord "I have not a clue about any of that new stuff" Carter promoted DAB as the future of radio in this country. DAB, as every one knows, is based on old 90s technology, it has poor coverage and it will be expensive for people to replace all of their FM radios for DAB radios. And since it is only the UK who have so much confidence in DAB (it was a BBC invention, and other countries have tried it but rejected it) it will mean that your car's DAB radio will be useless if you drive to the continent. The track record of DAB so far has been that the radio stations keep ramping up compression ratios to squeeze as many stations into the spectrum and as a result give us poor quality sound. Why did Carter push DAB? The sale of the FM spectrum of course. Disgraceful.
As to the specific part of Digital Britain mentioned here. I have teenage kids and I can honestly say that they do not file share. Part of that is their attitude of fighting against the big corporations and rejecting the musical pap that they produce, but that's a political stance. The way that they get music is simple and quite surprising. They listen to the *legal* internet sites and to places like YouTube which is where the Indie bands post their work *for free*. When my kids find music they like they send some money via paypal and get a CD in the post (sometimes even a CD-R) that the band have made themselves. This cuts out the record company corporations that the Digital Economy Bill seeks to protect. It is also the future of music. Mandelson should not seek to protect the old corporations, but instead seek how to support and encourage the new bands.
Stephen Fry gives some remarkably sensible advice in this interview:
http://www.netmag.co.uk/fry/
(Nb you need Silverlight installed to view this video.)
The idea that illegal filesharing has been the only reason for losses in sales- is a fallacy. The entire music industry has changed, and for the better- and the reasons labels can't keep up- is that their business model no longer fits what the market is asking for. That is not a reason for government intervention.
Listening to music free is not theft- if the record company want to use it as marketing- yet it is, if that exposure is not in line with their aims. On the otehr hand, it does cost money to make music- and the assumption that music should be free is not right either.
Like you say- your kids don't fileshare- because a large proportion of the music industry has just recognised that they need to adapt to the internet- and so they price reasonably, welcome the exposure that downloads give- and use it as a base for marketing. Seems fairly sensible.
Napster was a decade ago- and it seems that record companies have not changed their line since- and it really doesnt seem like good business sense to me.
If we are at the point where an entire bill is jeapordised, or an election is jeapordised, surely it would make sense to check whether a) filesharing is really the problem it is made out to be b)whether the tool used to tackle it, is really appropriate.
I have also found my articles appear on websites with other people's names on the byline, and my articles reworked and republished by other people (that is a big deal for technical articles, since the research is more work than the actual writing).
So I am very concerned about IP and copyright, and content providers being paid for their work. It's just that this bill looks at the issue from the wrong end of the telescope. It reinforces the big corps status (remember, I was burned when a book published by a big corp plagiarised my work) rather than guaranteeing that individuals get paid for their work.
Do you know of lulu.com?
A friend of mine has had a work published through them, what it is, (if anyone else is interested) is a company which prints books "on demand", the works gains an ISBN number and the author retains copyright.
Hope this is of some interest if ever ALEX pushes the button!
I am sorry some fool stole your work. Total sympathies.
Unfortunately this bill doesn't just deal with the Internet.
Let me summarise the digital radio braodcasting element.
- Existing FM and MW transmissions to stop in 2015.
This provides no benefit, because this will not happen in other European countries (no other EU country now has an agreed shut down date for these services), so we end up with more expensive radios, for just one country, and the scrapping of hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of perfectly serviceable radios for no good reason.
If there was a sufficiently attractive service on DAB then they wouldn't need to regulate for this. Hell, even the BBC are cutting DAB only stations because nobody listens to them.
However, it goes further than that.
Every FM car radio in every car will be rendered useless. The average car life expectancy is currently 12+ years. i.e. we'd have needed to started fitting the DAB receivers in 2003 as standard to meet this deadline, that's in a bill for 2010.
Navigation systems which use traffic information to provide the ability to avoid congestion and pollution in traffic jams will not work anymore because this information is transmitted on FM (Classis FM/Heart FM provide the carriers for competing services from Traffic Master and ITIS).
The broadcasters and DBis (strangely the Dept of Transport seem silent on this issue) think the wonderful features of a household DAB radio will be a benefit to drivers, as opposed to major sources of driver distraction and potential safety hazards.
In fact, there is nothing they propose that actually improves on the performance of the latest OEM fit twin FM tuner radio which can already show lists of receiveable FM stations.
EPGs are a complete waste of time in a car. You want a station then and there with minimum distraction in choosing said station.
DAB's ability to provide an updateable screen showing traffic info etc, is technically illegal in a number of countries due to the driver distraction issues. But the government want's to force us to increase our costs by doing this for one market. (>70% of British built cars are exported)
Needless to say the discussions between the car inductry on this with the DBis have been a complete dialogue of the deaf. They don't want to know, we have a duty of care to repeat these warnings.
Their solution of add on aftermarket items is utterly and completely laughable. Add on buboes on the dash board or windscreen are simply items that can cause occupant injury in the event of a crash and totally unregulated.
They have no means to redress the issues with congestion avoidance and eco routing on existing systems which are dependant on deeply embedded vehicle systems communicating with each other (a different method for every car maker), and of course the existing car aerials aren't designed to operate at these higher frequencies.
Of course such an unnecessary change would impact on the those who can't afford new cars with new radio systems.
Turning off FM and MW broadcasts merely to help the broadcasters (which is what they said openly in December) and pushing the cost onto the user is so wrong. It again shows a government that is once again, unwittingly maybe, more interested in helping powerful business interests to the detriment of the general public and their safety.
The one change I would make to this bill would be to delay FM/MW switch off until at least 2020+ to limit the amount we punish those who don't buy spanking brand new cars every year.
As a bill that seeks to do this- I would have thought that thinking about what the bill needed to achieve, and starting from point of principle- rather than tacking togetehr several things in a ball- would have been easier.
The issue of copyright, post internet- is a complex one, and it is an issue that needs consideration-careful consideration on its own.
It cannot just be a clause in another bill- and it certainly is going to cause many problems if it is rushed through.
But for govt there is an issue here, which is bigger than the bill itself, in the short term- this election is being fought very hard- there are not many votes in it- and it certainly doesn't seem politically expedient to alienate so many= and allow a bill to be perceived as the 'illegal downloads bill'-when that is not what it is.
Thanks for the reply.
Even better, very much a common sense reply.
To be honest, I'll leave the copyright/file sharing issue to those who know/care about these issues.
For the UK car industry this DAB issue is an unwelcome, irritating, and uncoordinated mess. A wish list from DBis who think making the wish louder makes it seem more sensible than it is.
The silence on this issue from the Dept of Transport is quite interesting.
France have legislated, in good time, to require all vehicle radio recievers to support DMB-A from September 2013. A very clear target. No discussions. Of course no broadcast system exists in France yet, so we'll see how that pans out.
The UK on the other hand have 'aspirations', a commitment not to legislate, but to use consumer protection legislation as a big stick to force manufacturers to fall into line in applying an inferior system.
About 20~30% of radio listening occurs in a vehicle. There is near zero demand for DAB, apart from a few people aware of the governments intention to make obsolete the countries existing radio reciever infrastructure.
According to the experts informing the SMMT, it takes roughly four years to develop a new car from scratch, which makes a bid to implement a change as early as 2013 an expensive option.
The Bill is one of those that is likely to be subject to horse trading to get it through due to time constraints.
This bit needs to be revised purely in timing terms. (Assuming any horse traders are reading. Please!)
As for the copyright side. My cynical side thinks that'll get that through, so the opposition can then make an issue of the Mandybill's bias in favour of the unreconstructed parts of the music industry.
Actually Arqiva have a planned roll out to increase DAB coverage inthe time till 2013, but this still has noticeable gaps in it.
The technology may be different but the issues are not new. I live somewhere where I can only get mobile phone reception whilst at the window of the front upstairs bedroom, and my folks can only makea call by standing of the top of their neighbours driveway.
Concerning your issue about the PC being better. The Digital Radio UK (DRUK) and WorldDMB people tend to get a bit defensive about people listening to the services over the internet. It costs the broadcasters more to support this, and they are quite clear, (at least the Beeb people are) that they don't want to use the internet for mass broadcast.
A shame listeners seem to prefer that solution.
Re: Radio 4 crackle. LW I assume. At least it can be received in lumpy parts of Scotland, crackle and whistles ot no'.
I wouldn't ditch the DAB radio just yet. Chances are you're gonna need it;)
Sorry. Let's just say I was confused about the pop up saying the item would be going to moderation.
Somehow able to post without logging in.
I hope you fix this before Magna Carta finds out;)
"The Long Tail" by Chris Anderson
Published in the UK by Random House at £8.99
(2007) ISBN: 9781844138517
(I borrowed it from the library, cheapskate that I am!)
It really does make you think and wonder athe possibilities for the future, long after Lord M is forgotten.
I promise Alex and the rest of you that I am not Mr Anderson's agent, and I have no connection with Random House.
The Conservatives brought in the Child Support Agency because papers like the Daily Mail had run campaigns to "Make men living on council estates pay for the children they father with multiple partners". Trouble was such men didn't have the money to pay much child support or were delinquent and it was the middle classes who were really hit by CSA activity.
This is what will happen if this ridiculous Mandelsonian bill becomes law. Habitual bittorrent outlaws will continue to upload and download freely by using methods like those mentioned above. It will be innocent men and women whose children share music or who have not encrypted their wireless router that will be hit.
The ISPs do NOT want to police internet usage by their customers. The bill will NOT stop illegal exchange of pirated material. People will NOT buy more CDs and DVDs because of this bill. ISPs who ruthlessly police usage by their customers will be deserted by those customers who will move to saner and more enlightened ISP competitors.
The whole thing is the last folly of a dying regime.
Truly, truly pathetic!