Fair deals can bring fans back.
Six million UK citizens are infringing copyright daily by downloading material via P2P and other file sharing services, according to the government’s Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property.
Let’s not however fall into the trap of assuming that the choice is between massive infringement bringing industries to their knees, and clamping down on users.
What we are faced with at root is a choice about how we want to reward artists in the future, and the products we want. What P2P and download services show is that access, sharing, trying and finding are some of the keys to a good digital native product. We can see that there is very little like this commercially available.
How creative producers get paid is on the face of it more difficult. But there are plenty of possibilities. We could see industry out-competing ‘illicit’ services, by putting their own P2P style ‘all you can eat’ services on the market. There have been rumours that Spotify might launch such a product, and we know that Virgin failed to reach agreement with licensing bodies.
If commercial services cannot out-compete P2P, then we can listen to the academics. Among academics and some groups on the continent, there are calls for a ‘cultural flat rate’ which would mean broadband users paying the equivalent of a pound or two a month for access to content which is currently illicit. The Open Rights Group would broadly support a flat rate that was voluntary for consumers.
Beyond all of these questions, we need to remember that ‘recorded music’, just like a gig or sheet music, is a commercialised form, designed for a particular method of access (a record or file, a venue or a booklet). We may choose very different ways of accessing and experiencing music in the future. These may – and in all probability will – be much more commercially lucrative in the future than ubiquitous electronic files.
What’s clear is that the answers to monetising music have nothing to do with harsh copyright enforcement. We do not need to bend our internet infrastructure into an enormous and unfair copyright infringement detection tool, nor do we need ‘three strikes’ disconnection regimes which the EU parliament currently wishes to make illegal.
Up to now, the debate has run along the lines of suggesting that downloads are destroying legal markets, and therefore clamp down measures are needed. However, attempts at harsh enforcement are unpopular and unfair, and create a backlash. They aren’t the answer, but legal services can be.