EU Public Affairs Monitor - 15/12/08

UK consumers, Big Content battle over three-strikes rules December 01, 2008
"Although France's "graduated response" proceedings have attracted the most attention, the UK is in the midst of a consultation of its own on how to involve both content owners and ISPs in some sort of response to P2P file-sharing. The government is pushing a co-regulatory approach that would task industry groups with hashing out the details of such a plan, while the government would make sure that any agreement is fair, competitive, and preserves privacy. With all the responses now in, the UK music industry is clearly pleased that it won't have to pursue 6.5 million copyright infringers on its own. Digital rights groups are... less excited.

The entire consultation is helmed by BERR, the UK agency that handles Business, Enterprise, & Regulatory Reform, and it stems from the famous (in certain circles, anyway) Gowers Review of intellectual property that we covered extensively back in 2006. That report, which took a top-to-bottom look at UK copyright and IP policy, was stuffed with plenty of consumer-friendly ideas, such as no new copyright term extensions. But it also contained good news for rightsholders, such as a suggestion that the government step in if ISPs and rightsholders couldn't agree on how to handle the issue of P2P file-sharing." [ArsTechnica]

Voluntary campus-wide music licenses could stop the lawsuits December 08, 2008
"It takes a special knee-jerk churliness to jackboot the music industry in the proverbial groin every time it comes up with a new idea. Sure, some of these ideas (Hi, DRM-laden CDs!) make one want to spend an afternoon banging head against desk in existential despair over the low collective intelligence of the people in this world who make decisions. But the industry isn't staffed only with fair-use hating zombies and DRM lovers; the occasional human roams the hallways, sometimes hatching new schemes that aren't wholly stupid, ridiculous, or evil. When that happens, it's worth holding one's rhetorical fire until the idea is fully developed, offering encouragement and constructive criticism.

Of course, Internet groin kicks are easier. And think of the traffic! But they're not always helpful, not when you'd like the industry to get up and walk arm-in-arm into the sunset with users rather than lie in the street and issue subpoenas from the gutter." [ArsTechnica]

Masnick on the Music Tax Dec. 15, 2008
"I’m more sympathetic to EFF-style voluntary collective licensing than Mike Masnick is, but I have to say that the case he makes here is pretty compelling. I think this is really the key point:

What you’re doing is setting up a big, centrally planned and operated bureau of music, that officially determines the business model of the recording industry, figures out who gets paid, collects the money and pays some money out. The same record industry that has fought so hard against any innovation remains in charge and will have tremendous sway in setting the “rules.” The plan leaves no room for creativity. It leaves no room for innovation. It’s basically picking the only business model and encoding it in stone. [TechLiberation]

Taxing music at the ISP level: Good idea or bad? Dec 5^th
"Warner Music Group has a proposition for U.S. universities, according to Techdirt: buy a blanket license to music downloads through file-sharing services, or be sued.Techdirt thinks that this is a bad idea, and I disagree. Techdirt's criticisms are clear." [CNet]

Lessig’s call for a “simple blanket license” in Remix 01/12/08
"Lessig Remix coverI’m finishing up Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig’s latest book, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy and wanted to make a brief comment about his call for a “simple blanket license” to solve online music piracy.

Overall, I thought Prof. Lessig made a good case regarding the benefits of “remix culture” and why copyright law should leave breathing room for the various derivative works of amateur creators. On the other hand, Lessig still too often blurs remix culture with “ripoff culture” (i.e., those who aren’t out to create anything new but instead just take something without paying a penny for it).

To solve that latter problem, Lessig again endorses a proposal that William Fisher, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and others have made for collective licensing of all online music, but he fails to drill down into the devilish details. He says, for example, that “by authorizing a simple blanket licensing procedure, whereby users could, for a low fee, buy the right to freely file-share” we could “decriminalize file sharing.” " [TechLiberation]

Techdirt's Mike Masnick On Why a Music Tax Is a Mistake December 11, 2008
"Techdirt founder Mike Masnick has followed the twists and turns of the digital music debate for more than a decade, offering some of the most prescient and lucid information and arguments on the topic anywhere. Today he tackles growing calls for a voluntary music-licensing scheme, pushed most recently by Warner Music Group to universities, that would basically allow file sharing by having ISPs impose a surcharge on all users to be paid out to copyright holders. (A version of this has been done before with blank media like tape cassettes in some markets, including Canada, but this would be a massive expansion of the idea.)

Mike's take is not the final word on the matter, but it should be required reading for anyone interested in understanding where music is today and where it is headed. It is reproduced with permission below in its entirety. As he ably argues, the future of music is often confused with the future of the music business — but they are not the same thing at all. In fact, the interests of the music business, defined primarily as the major recording labels, is arguably one of the biggest impediments to moving music itself forward." [Wired]

EU Public Affairs Monitor - 02/12/08

EC pares down plans for telecoms super-regulator Dec 2008
"The European Commission has agreed to pare back plans for a telecoms super-regulator, following a European Parliament vote in September.

Telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding had wanted a large body that could manage and potentially overrule national regulatory bodies such as the UK's Ofcom. However, she faced strong opposition from the national regulators and, on Friday, the Commission announced a new version of the proposed legislation, providing for a body of just 20 members — half of whom would be seconded from the national regulators themselves." [ZDNet]

Gov't launches £30m fund for small tech businesses 02 Dec 2008
"Business secretary Peter Mandelson on Monday announced a £30m fund for small to medium-sized technology companies.

As part of its Enterprise Capital Funds programme, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (Berr) will make the funds available to information technology, electronics and instrumentation companies seeking investment capital. The fund will be managed by TTP Ventures." [ZDNet]

EU Public Affairs Monitor - 21/11/08

Committee on Culture
"1. Presentation of the outcomes of the French Presidency on 2nd December: The French ministers will present the achievements of the French Presidency of the Council in the fields for which the Committee is responsible. The ministers' presentations will be followed by question and answer sessions with MEPs.

2. Term of protection of copyright and related rights: the draft opinion stresses the importance of implementing measures to ensure fair and consistent remuneration of performers. It will be adopted in Committee on 2 December. The draftsman is Christopher HEATON-HARRIS (EPP-ED, GB)"

A better return for our money: The EU wants the EIB to play a role in its response to the economic crisis – but it must make sure the EIB meets its existing responsibilities better
"The European Investment Bank (EIB), the EU's publicity-shy house bank, has shot to prominence in recent weeks as the global economic crisis has deepened. Nationally and collectively, EU leaders have scrambled to boost lending to small businesses that are being hit by the credit crunch. José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, has talked up the role the EIB could play in responding to the crisis; Günter Verheugen, the industry commissioner, wants the EIB to offer a €40 billion soft-loan package to the European car industry; and the UK's finance minister, Alistair Darling, has been pushing UK banks to make the most of the EIB's increased loans facility for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)." [EuropeanVoice]

U.K. Music Backs Government Proposal On ISPs
"U.K. Music, the recently formed umbrella organization encompassing the major British music-industry groups, has declared its support for a co-regulatory system between ISPS, the music industry and a government-appointed body to ensure ISPs tackle illegal P2P file-sharing.

In its contribution to the consultation process set up by the U.K. government's Department for Business Enterprises and Regulatory Reform (BERR), U.K. Music says a government-approved independent adjudicator is required to oversee a co-regulatory system covering ISPs and digital piracy. "In view of the historic differences between rights holders and ISPs, some form of regulatory control is required," U.K. Music says in its documents. The organization agrees with the government that media and telecommunications regulator Ofcom is the appropriate body." [Billboard]

UK Music call for online copyright regulator
"Cross-industry trade body UK Music has told the government that it supports proposals for a regulator to oversee copyright issues on the internet. In a submission to a government consultation on the issue of music and the net, UK Music say that, "in view of the historic differences between rights holders and ISPs, some form of regulatory control is required".
As much previously reported, some progress has been made this year regarding the long running dispute between the music industry and the internet service providers, in which the former said the latter had a duty to play a more proactive role in combating online piracy. " [CMUDaily]

Term extension petition launched at PPL APM
"'Performer members' of recordings royalty collecting society PPL (ie recording artists and musicians) have put their names to the latest petition calling on the government to extend the recorded music copyright term.
As much much much previously reported, in Europe the copyright term for recordings is fifty years, whereas the term enjoyed by songwriters (and writers and photographers etc) is life plus seventy years." [CMUDaily]

PPL performer members sign letter to the Prime Minister as UK government continues in its failure to give musicians copyright parity with other creators
"Performer members who attended PPL's second Annual Performer Meeting (APM), which took place at Abbey Road Studios on Monday (17th), were moved to sign a letter to the Prime Minister asking him for Fair Play For Musicians.

This important initiative has been made necessary due to the intransigence of the UK government in their failure to support copyright term extension which would put musicians on parity with other creators (authors, composers, painters, photographers amongst many) and which is being both recognised and supported by the European Commission and governments around Europe." [RecordOfTheDay]

Member States Review Key Copyright Issues
WIPO member states meeting under the auspices of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights met from November 3 to 7 November 2008 to review a number of key copyright issues. Under the chairmanship of Mr. Jukka Liedes of Finland, the SCCR examined the current state of play WIPO’s work on limitations and exceptions, the protection of audiovisual performances and the protection of broadcasting organizations. Discussions also featured the question of access to copyright-protected content by visually impaired persons. [WIPO]

EU Public Affairs Monitor - 27/08/08

Feds arrest man accused of posting unreleased Guns N' Roses songs August 27, 2008
"How he got his hands on the goods, we don't yet know. But today, police visited the home of a Culver City man and arrested him on suspicion of violating federal copyright law by posting nine previously unreleased Guns N' Roses songs on a website, Scott Glover reports in this L.A. Times story.

In June, the nine songs, from the band's upcoming album "Chinese Democracy," ended up on the website Antiquiet, which drew the attention of the feds. The site received so much traffic that it crashed.

Kevin Cogill, 27, told the FBI that he had posted the songs, according to an arrest affidavit. (In other stories, Cogill has been quoted as Kevin Skwerl, who, according to Rolling Stone, operates Antiquiet and used to work in the distribution office of Universal Music. The Recording Industry Assn. of America says it's the same person.) "Leak or no leak, I said that the only way the album would be a net success would be if the music was good enough to move units for years to come," he wrote at the time on his blog." [LATimes]

Co-regulation for “illicit P2P” August 5th, 2008
"The Department for Business (BERR) is consulting on a co-regulatory approach that it is considering adopting to tackle the use of peer-to-peer filesharing networks (P2P) for copyright infringement.

The six largest consumer broadband access providers by market share have agreed to a Code of Practice that would see them writing to customers instructing them to stop infringing activity when they receive a complaints from rightsholder bodies. They would also pass on copies of the rightsholder’s complaint. This plan has been criticised by both rightsholder and ISP sympathisers: the latter see “nasty-grams” as harming the ISP’s relationship with their customer, and conceding the dangerous principle that the ISP is responsible for their customers’ use of the network, while the copyright activists say that the scheme doesn’t go far enough, and unless the ISPs actually disconnect customers then users can just ignore it." [PublicAffairsLynx]