The right to peer inside your iPod

Charles Arthur
London Guardian
Thursday, July 10, 2008

The heads of the G8 governments, meeting this week, are about to ratify the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta), which – it’s claimed – could let customs agents search your laptop or music player for illegally obtained content. The European Parliament is considering a law that would lead to people who illicitly download copyrighted music or video content being thrown off the internet. Virgin Media is writing to hundreds of its customers at the request of the UK record industry to warn them that their connections seem to have been used for illegal downloading. Viacom gets access to all of the usernames and IP addresses of anyone who has ever used YouTube as part of its billion-dollar lawsuit in which it claims the site has been party to “massive intentional copyright infringement”.

It seems that 20th-century ideas of ownership and control – especially of intellectual property such as copyright and trademarks – are being reasserted, with added legal muscle, after a 10-year period when the internet sparked an explosion of business models and (if we’re honest) casual disregard, especially of copyright, when it came to music and video.

But do those separate events mark a swing of the pendulum back against the inroads that the internet has made on intellectual property?

(Article continues below)

‘A finger in the dyke’

Saul Klein, a venture capitalist with Index Ventures who has invested in the free database company MySQL, Zend (the basis of the free web-scripting language PHP) and OpenX, an open-source advertising system, is unconvinced. “In a world of abundance – which the internet is quintessentially – that drives the price of everything towards ‘free’,” he says. “People don’t pay for any content online. Not for music, not for video. They get it, either legally or illegally.”

Is that sustainable? “The model of suing your best customers and subpoenaing private information is doomed to failure,” Klein observes. “It’s putting a finger in the dyke. It won’t change the macro trend, which is that there’s an abundance of information. Copyright owners need to find new ways to generate income from their product. The fact is, the music industry is in rude health – more people than ever before are going to concerts, making it, listening to it. It’s the labels that are screwed. The artists and managers are making money. The labels aren’t.

Full article here

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5 Responses to “The right to peer inside your iPod”

1. Joe in CA Says:
   July 10th, 2008 at 9:33 am

   It’s labels that need to realize that they have become absolete and move on.

   Their money comes from leaching it from successful artists and then leaving them with debt. Read “Confessions of a Record Producer” to find out what major labels make artists sign.

   Any other money comes from lawsuits they make based on “intellectual property laws.”

   The bottom line is clear. “Intellectual property” is safer kept in your intellect. If you don’t want it “stolen,” keep it to yourself.

2. BeRealNow Says:
   July 10th, 2008 at 11:00 am

   They’re everywhere now. Want to know what your taxes are paying for? You’re paying for them to spy on you.

   Do you want to learn more about the EVIL government and what else their state-of-the-art spy technology is REALLY doing to us? Come here:

   https://www.intl-alliance.com/forum/index.php

   These hi-tech folks have the knowledge, experience, and inside information to help us realize what’s really going on. This site is private, it’s on secure, OFF-SHORE SERVERS, so everything is ANONYMOUS on their site; you cannot be tracked. This is their business!

   This group is very private and trustworthy. Come express your views. Your views are valuable. We need to hear from you there. Please? People need to know the truth and share the truth.

   Thank you!
   

3. me Says:
   July 10th, 2008 at 12:04 pm

   led zeppelin said it best “no radio singles = no label profits”. back in the day, you made your money through album sales and touring. now the dinosaurs in charge of labels sell you out to commercials and video game soundtracks. then try to push a record that has 1 good song, because the bands contract is for 6 albums. the record industry has doomed itself. to quote NOFX “Dinosaurs will die”

4. John Says:
   July 10th, 2008 at 2:54 pm

   In retrospect it seems that dying, formerly successful industries are screwing over ALL their customers before they give up and admit that they are obsolete. It will prolly take 20 years, give or take, for industries like record labels or oil companies to finally step out of the spotlight and go die. The internet is free, it always has been and always will be and some dinosaurs in suits are not gonna change that!

5. CB Says:
   July 10th, 2008 at 8:28 pm

   They are trying to control everything. Free thinking and thought, they want you to pay for. I propose a massive media boycott. Let’s call it a “blackout” and see what they think about their media sales now.

   The fact is that You Tube has actually promoted a lot of their shows and music videos, so artist or shows that were never seen before now get the credit they deserve. This is not a market that has been stolen from them, since they are not pushing such music or media conventions in the first place. This is a market that has now become in lucrative in its own right, and now there greedy little hands want to get a hold of it. They are not dreaming about what they have lost, but what they could gain.