Free Music?

The music industry continues to grapple with streaming and new subscription models and is generally shrinking and what is a volatile market. The pirates are still here, but so are a growing number of services whose legitimacy is often hard to determine. Free music and file sharing can be traced back to Napster and those that followed such as Kazaa and The Pirate Bay. Free music is not going away and making sense of where we will end up and balance the market is often hard to determine.  

This week we were introduced to a new Android app ‘Music Download Pro’. It looked and behaved like a music download service allowing extensive search against artists, tracks, albums etc and the results were quickly displayed and were quite impressive. You can then sample a track or download it and the result was quite impressive regarding the speed and quality. It also remembered your downloads in the library, so you can replay them at your will. The challenge we found was that there appears to be no pay slot and the app itself was free, so where’s the money?

Spotify continues to lead the streaming music market and has a sizeable audience across Europe and the US. Its Premium subscription service has a growing following with users willing to pay a monthly fee to receive ‘as much as they can eat’ ad free music. The free ad funded model still works in parallel and they do have a model that everyone can see and which importantly pays royalties.

We now read in Lifestyle that 68.6% of Japanese spend no money on music downloads. We can’t substantiate the validity of the claim, or the basis of the sample surveyed, but the Japanese music market is claimed to have narrowed to the big hitters and ‘X Factory’ clones. The alternative revenues from ringtones, concerts and merchandise do offer new or increased revenues and the market mix is obviously in a state of digital flux, but if consumers reject the pay model – where’s the money?

So where could we be heading?

There will be various revenue models that are based on the artists ability to turn their fans into money. It’s not about selling records but selling stuff to fans. Will artists now make more money from product endorsement of a perfume, car, watch etc and their image, than they make from music royalties? We often assume artist will all make money from concerts and merchandise but does the celebrity factor make a bigger contribution in the future and what does that mean to the music produced? Do we now accept the fabricated stars as musicians or merely as celebrities?

Meanwhile we continue to download music for free via the likes of Music Download Pro and think little of who’s paying for it.

The Pirate Bay Sold

Earlier this year the founders of The Pirate Bay were sentenced to one year in jail and a fine of $3.6 million for running the site. Now Swedish software firm Global Gaming Factory X has announced the acquisition of The Pirate Bay for 60 million Swedish crowns and also an agreement to acquire the shares in Peerialism , a software technology company that develops solutions for data distribution and distributed storage based on new p2p technology.

Global Gaming Factory X has stated that The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which “satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary.” They intend to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site.

The Pirate Bay has issued a statement claiming that it is being sold for less than its value but that the basis of the service will remain. It a bit like when Napster was bought out and the question now is whether The Pirate Bay will remain a force but under new rules or that like others before them the new rules dilute the service and turn off its followers.

Pirate Bay Judges Walk the Plank

The founders of The Pirate Bay were recently found guilty of breaking copyright laws and sentenced to one year in prison. The men were ordered to pay £2.5 million in damages to entertainment companies including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures. That ruling was appealed because the judge who sent them down - Tomas Norström - was a member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property and the Swedish Copyright Association.

The possibility of personal bias raised its head and Norström was replaced by Ulrika Ihrfelt, who has now been stood down because she's a member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property and the Swedish Copyright Association. A final decision on whether the case will return to court could still be many weeks away, but the chances of an appeal must certainly be increasing and unfortunately the law is once again is making an ass of itself.

Piracy: Its All About Open Rights Management

Piracy is a word now synonymous with copyright infringement, but where did it originate from and what is happening today to address it?

Ben Sheffner in his blog Copyrights & Campaigns traces the equation of "piracy" with infringement back to an English bishop named John Fell, the Bishop of Oxford, who lived 1625-1686 and who resuscitated the fledgling Oxford University Press after the Restoration. During this pre-Statute of Anne period, “piracy” was widely used to describe unauthorized printing of books. Adrian Johns in his study of book publishing in England, The Nature of the Book, piracy had a “technical meaning” in the seventeenth century: “a pirate was someone who indulged in the unauthorized reprinting of a title recognized to belong to someone else by the formal conventions of the printing and bookselling community.” Piracy “soon came to stand for a wide range of perceived transgressions of civility emanating from print’s practitioners.”

Today some 350 years later the internet has reintroduced the term across all digital media with some such as the Pirate Bay choosing to use the association to describe their business.

The French Government has attempted to create a 'three strikes and you're out' law but has failed to get it through their parliament. The plan, involves internet subscribers receiving two warnings about illegal file-sharing activity and then being cut off from the internet.

The UK Government has previously threatened the ISP (internet service provider) industry with such a law but Davis Lammy the UK government minister responsible for intellectual property has now ruled out a 'three strikes' law stating it was not "the right road" for UK law makers. Lammy has stated in The Observer, that disconnection is off the Government agenda.

The recent Digital Britain report proposed the creation of a 'rights agency' and has asked companies that produce copyrighted material to contribute to a consultation on exactly what that agency would be and how it would operate. Lammy says that ‘the solutions are going to be commercial solutions. They are going to be solutions that are about ensuring people pay for content, but the ease of paying is there.’.

Importantly in today’s environment Lammy says ‘Copyright has largely been the domain of lawyers and of creatives…We are moving into an environment where so many people have to be aware of being on the right side of the law, but at the moment accessing those rights is not a straightforward process for the consumer.’ He said, ‘I want to show the person in the street that the system actually works in their interests. I want them to see it helps keep them in work.’

So piracy, infringement and protection of copyright is on the agenda of governments and there are signs that they are grappling with the open management of rights. Maybe much of the current debate about orphans in publishing is not down to them being lost but about using technology to record and manage the rights given to them and protecting them from being land grabbed for commercial gain.

Copyright Infringement Consistancy?

Peter Sunde, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Carl Lundstrom were collectively found guilty of promoting copyright infringement this week by a Swedish court. They were heavily fined and also each was sentenced to a year in prison. These were the men behind The Pirate Bay, the world's most high-profile file-sharing site.

This rare victory for the entertainment industry could have some double edge implications and now exposes the inconsistency of approach to piracy across borders and media sectors.

The Pirate Bay defendants claim that although shocked by the severity of the judgement they openly expected to loose. The fine of $4.5 million was a fraction of the $17.5 million sought and the ensuing appeal process is likely to be drawn out and long with The Pirate Bay now have nothing to loose and determined to fight on. Every piece of press creates further awareness of the dangers of piracy, the challenges of protecting copyright and also gives the pirates the publicity and market awareness they crave. Some say it also elevates them within an anti establishment sub culture.

Unlike Napster, Kazza and other from the past The Pirate Bay has been found guilty of not storing materials or distributing materials but in providing links to materials. Sunde claims that in doing this, they are not different how services such as Google and search engines work. An interesting perspective when we consider the basis of the Internet itself is based on links, indexes and search and discovery.

The book industry challenges to digital infringement have not followed the hard line of the music industry. There is the Scribd, Wattpad and eBay piracy files which are not links but hosted or sold product. Yet we see no court action, just a take down notices and slapped wrist behind closed doors. As we have said before we don’t say this is wrong but that we should have a public awareness of the files and offenders. Then there is the Great book Bank Robbery where the party challenged could be seen by many to being rewarded for their infringements. Also rewarded with something that any party involved owned and granted a monopoly of it to boot! This sends out what message?

Copyright will remain a digital battleground but consistency and education are important if the general public are to be brought onboard.

The Pirate Bay Links to Facebook

As the publishing world absorbs the reality of digital pirate copies of books on Scribd and revelations on eBay’s bargain offers the Pirate Bay has unveiled a feature that makes it easy for web users to post links to pirated material on their Facebook page.

Who is responsible for what is becoming murkier.

The Pirate Bay is one of the world's most prominent link-distributing sites and has just been subject to a high visibility trial in Sweden which will decide, whether the people behind it are guilty of copyright offences. Many of the links it hosts are used to download copyright-infringing music and movies.

Now they have introduced a link, 'Share on Facebook' that puts the link on the user's Facebook page which enables anyone with BitTorrent software to download the file from other computers.This could be used legitimately for artists to distribute music video files to fans by Facebook and clearly many Facebook users will think twice about posting public links to copyrighted content without permission on their profile pages

The question now is whether Facebook will err on caution and block all links posted via The Pirate Bay before publication.

Piracy on the Digital Highway

When Steve Jobs threw down the gauntlet to the music producers and suggested removing prohibitive and unfriendly DRM, he was certainly opening the DRM debate. Last week, not surprisingly he got support from Yahoo, but more surprisingly, his timing coincided with debates in publishing on the emotive issue of ‘open access’ and a new access debate in the film industry. All media seems under siege by the pirates in the digital arena.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that executives at Hollywood studios now believe that it is only a matter of time before the debate over removing copyright protections spreads to the movie industry. Until now, the studios have asserted their copyright in the use of DRM. The debate now centres on the needs of the home entertainment channel and their continued and growing battle with the pirates, whose copies of movies are circulate freely online without any restrictions on how they are traded or copied. Many now fear the situation will get worse in the near future.

Today we have Pirate Bay, a multi media version of the original file sharing Napser. The site is as big as USA Today and its 1.5 million visitors and growing. It uses file sharing BitTorrent software and Envisional, a UK company that tracks illegal downloading for Hollywood studios estimates that 4 million surfers in North America and Europe use Bit Torrent on a daily basis. The technology is so efficient that the BBC has adopted it for distributing its programme archive.

Hollywood starts from a different position from the music companies. Unlike most compact discs, DVDs come with tight restrictions aimed at preventing consumers from easily copying movies. Although they are much harder to break, even the next-generation discs known as Blu-ray and HD DVD have been found to have flaws in their copyright protection.

The Wall Street Journal article stated that many movie executives agree that physical DVDs still need copy protection, but that some are starting to discuss whether the heavy-duty digital rights management, now on electronic copies, is the right route. While movies sold on Apple's iTunes can be played on as many as five computers and an unlimited number of iPods, most online movie stores offer far less flexibility.

Having just upgraded to a new laptop and Windows Vista, I share some of the frustrations of trying to deal with transferring files in an overtly restrictive DRM world. Although some studios favour finding a way to let consumers move their previously purchased movie from device to device, others sadly believe each upgrade represents a new sales opportunity for the same content that was on the older device.

This week we read the latest digital copying scandal. It comes not from the pop music market but the conservative world of classic music. It involves English pianist Joyce Hatto’s highly acclaimed works, which now appear not to be virtuoso pieces played by her but mere copies or remixed renditions of others performances. Over 100 discs released on her husband’s record label, said to be recorded with full orchestra, in a studio near their home in Hertfordshire. We understand, or at least are familiar with the pop music world of ‘sampling’, mixing other’s works into a new form. The fact is that digitisation is making copying easier.

Many in book publishing are only just entering these murky digital high seas. Should they stop and wait for calm waters or sail forward? It is far easier to copy and reproduce books and printed material than any other media. A good scanner and OCR facilities can get anyone into the market so it is imperative that the book industry makes it easy for the customers to browse, buy and enjoy digital books.

The Sunday Times, in an article on piracy stated that recent Treasury report on Intellectual Property concluded that DRM constraints and over protection actually encourages innovation and the next big thing that consumers seek. So we find ourselves again trying to protect on one hand yet give the consumer what they want on the other. Maybe just as with the pop pirates of the 1960’s the digital pirates of today will force a significant change in the market.