[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Wired News : Pundits Ask: Who Owns Music?




A note from Paul Jones:

   Report from the Harvard conference featuring John Perry Barlow, DJ Spooky, Negativland, They Might Be Giants, etc

============================================================

 From Wired News, available online at:
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,34605,00.html

Pundits Ask: Who Owns Music?  
by Chris Oakes  

3:00 a.m. 26.Feb.2000 PST 
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts -- Intellectual property protection in the
age of digital music has few options -- three, to be exact. 

And if you ask Harvard Law School Professor Terry Fisher, only one is
truly viable: the unfettered release of intellectual property, with
profits distributed fairly among all interested parties. 

Also: 
Look and listen: Lycos Music
Hear how MP3 Rocks the Web
MP3 Revolution: Rhetoric or Real?

"Distributors of insecure music through authorized sites enable
creators to make profit," Fisher said. "The only way out of this is to
develop a business model." 

Fisher's ideas were center-stage as he and other panelists took up the
cloudy state of intellectual property in the digital age, where
copying is a one-click proposition. The panel was part of "Signal or
Noise? The Future of Music on the Net", a conference held Friday at
Harvard Law School. 

The other options for keeping digital media under wraps -- legal
enforcement of copyrights and digital copy-protection technology --
are about exercising control, Fisher said. As such, both have what may
be insurmountable, Internet-driven obstacles to their success. 

"The record industry has not succeeded, nor have they failed," Fisher
said of the Recording Industry Association of America's legal pursuit
of Web sites distributing copyrighted music online. The outcome of the
suits, and their impact on online piracy, is still unclear, he said. 

"The doctrinal basis of these [RIAA] suits is very solid. If
they can be mounted, they would be very effective. The problem is it's
hard to locate the target." 

The ease of Internet publishing and the difficulty of catching and
prosecuting the publishers makes the task of enforcement very
difficult, he said. 

Panelists also pointed out that if the RIAA is successful in suing the
online music exchange service Napster, clones of the service, which
exist already, will proliferate and will have to be pursued, resulting
in an almost endless legal chase. 

Napster is a service that connects individual users' computers so they
can swap MP3s without ever visiting a Web site, presenting an entirely
new type of legal challenge to the recording industry's anti-piracy
efforts. 

Copy-protection is another approach to intellectual property control
that the recording industry favors. Protection schemes for digital
music -- most notably the Secure Digital Music Initiative -- aim for a
digital music format with the built-in ability to restrict consumer
use and distribution of files.  
The problem with such protection is that the introduction of rules and
limitations for consumers where none exist now will be unacceptable to
the music consumer, Fisher said. 

"It comes at a huge social cost," he said. The ability for the
consumer to record it and play it anywhere "would be shut down by the
adoption of a secure format." 

Fisher's business-model solution to the intellectual property question
puts much faith in the market success of the MP3 paradigm, relying on
a still-hypothetical business model. Theoretically, at least, that
model would legally give consumers what they want and enable
profitable digital music companies -- obviating the need to control
distribution. 

But proponents of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) aren't
ready to give up the notion of copy protection as the answer to the IP
question. 

Panelist and engineer Karlheinz Brandenburg, who helped develop both
MP3 and SDMI, laid out one SDMI-based market scenario. Brandenburg
envisions a model in which a consumer can pass on music to others for
sampling, and if her friends buy the music as a result, the original
consumer receives a discount on her next purchase. 

Rules don't have to be unfriendly, Brandenburg said, and proposed that
others associated with the "fair use" of music, which allow the owner
of a CD to make a taped copy -- to play in a car, for example -- could
be built into SDMI-based playback devices. 

Panelist Eric Sheirer, an engineer at the MIT Media Lab who has
closely watched the development of the SDMI specification, said it is
nonetheless critical that recording companies not be the ones to
establish SDMI's rules. Public debate, rather, must influence the
framework of SDMI, he said. 

He criticized the SDMI organization for limiting its $10,000 annual
membership to only those with a vested interest in the music industry.


Fisher pointed out that elements of fair use ideals were built into
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but actually have little
practical effect in protecting fair use of digital music. He fears the
same fate for SDMI if the record industry is trusted to establish fair
rules in the design and application of the technology. 

As is often the case at Internet music conferences, the future was
deemed to be wide open. 

Reprising the panel's opening theme, moderator Jonathan Zittrain, who
is also executive director of conference sponsor Berkman Center for
Internet & Society, asked, "Will technology kill intellectual property
or make it stronger?" 

"Technology had it on the mat," he answered. "But now
[intellectual property is] fighting back, and it's a world of
many possible futures."  

Related Wired Links:  

Dueling Over Digital Music Rights  
22.Feb.2000 

'Save Our Napster,' Say Students  
17.Feb.2000 

Time for a Napster Rest?  
10.Feb.2000 

MP3: RIAA 'Waged a Campaign'  
8.Feb.2000 

Copy-Protected CDs Taken Back  
3.Feb.2000 

Stamping Out Pirated Tunes  
29.Jan.2000 

SDMI Alternative Secures Partner  
20.Jan.2000 

RIAA Suing Upstart Startup  
15.Nov.1999 

Copyright  1994-99 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.