EU Public Affairs Monitor - 30/12/08

Choruss: legal file sharing on campus 11th December 2008
"The plan to provide US students with compulsory flat-fee music finally has a name, it emerged this week. Choruss LLC will provide participating universities with a replacement for their current subscription services such as Rhapsody, and has the backing of the the EFF and the tacit support of the RIAA. That alone indicates the magnitude of the initiative. When have those two lobbying groups ever agreed on music policy?

This, the worst kept secret in the music business, leaked out in April, when Jim Griffin confirmed he had been engaged by Warner Music to seek deals that would help end the litigation strategy against students, and replace it with a steady pool of income for the rights holders. (Griffin has spent a decade campaigning to "monetize the anarchy" of digital music - see our 2004 interview)." [TheRegister]

Has Boston University Left Its Safe Harbor and Become Liable for Students' Piracy? 12. 2.2008
"Defenders of the most egregious, blatant forms of online copyright piracy often suffer from what could be called Wile-E.-Coyote syndrome: They can become so fixated on throttling the roadrunner of copyright protection that they fail to notice that they have just run off a cliff and begun plunging downward.

For example, a federal judge has reportedly held that Boston University (BU) is such an incompetent internet-access provider that it cannot disclose the identities of allegedly infringing users of its network. In London-Sire Records, Inc. v. Does 1-4, Judge Gertner's recent order granted BU's "Motion to Quash" because "[BU] has adequately demonstrated that it is not able to identify the alleged infringers with a reasonable degree of technical certainty."

Continue reading Has Boston University Left Its Safe Harbor and Become Liable for Students' Piracy? . . ."

New Op-Ed December 30, 2008
"Rick Carnes and I co-wrote an op-ed on ISP music licensing (as exemplified by the Choruss operation) for Content Agenda that might be of interest.

http://www.contentagenda.com/article/CA6625534.html?industryid=45173t

Coolfer published a couple comments on the op-ed. Let it be known that I dig Glenn and Coolfer and I'm just clarifying a couple things he mentioned (also just speaking for myself here and not for my co-author).

One of the points we made is that an unlimited download service at below market rates undermines the investment that legitimate services have spent and committed. (I refuse to use "all you can eat" to describe these services as that phrase grates on me as comparing music to, let's say, a potato, which I won't do.) The point (which I made in more detail in a recent article for the ABA) is that users are already paying for the very Internet connection they use to buy their music from legitimate services. If you tell them that they only need to pay $5 a month more for all the music they want from what were once illegal "services"--well, I think you see where that goes. The idea seems to be that students could get rid of their Rhapsody accounts, which appears to make EFF very happy." [MusicTechPolicy]

Don't Make Kids Online Crooks December 29, 2008 Monday
"Seventy-five years ago, Prohibition ended. Just 13 years after launching an extraordinary experiment in social reform, the nation recognized that the battle against "intoxicating liquors" had failed. Organized crime had exploded. Civil rights had been weakened. And an enormous number of ordinary Americans had become "criminals" as they found ways to evade, and profit from the evasion of, this hopeless law.

We're about a decade into our own hopeless war of prohibition, this one against "peer-to-peer piracy." The copyright industry has used every legal means within its reach (and some that may not be so legal) to stop Internet "pirates" from "sharing" copyrighted content without permission. These "copyright wars"--what the late Jack Valenti, former head of the Motion Picture Association of America, called his own "terrorist war" in which apparently the "terrorists" are our kids--have consumed an ever growing amount of legal resources. The Recording Industry Association of America alone has sued tens of thousands of individuals. These suits allege millions of dollars in damages. And schools across the nation have adopted strict policies to block activity that the Supreme Court in 2005 declared presumptively illegal." [ContentAgenda]