Rich Fiscus
19 Feb 2008 0:22
Anyone who read the IFPI's annual report on the state of the music industry when it was released in January would have already been aware that their stated goal for this year was to hold ISPs responsible for copyright infringement taking place on their networks. If you're not familiar with the IFPI, they're a international trade and lobbying organization representing all the major labels, plus a wide variety of smaller ones as well. If you're not familiar with their intentions to force ISPs to take responsibility for copyright enforcement all you have to do is look at the proposals in France, the U.K., and now Australia, which would do exactly that via so-called "three strikes" laws.
Chief executive of Australia's National Internet Industry Association, Peter Corones, will be meeting with Communications Minister Stephen Conroy this week to discuss ISPs' concerns over the proposed new law. While he hasn't laid out any specifics, he did say "Internet service providers are not the enforcers of copyright," calling them instead "a mere conduit" to reach the internet.
No doubt one of the issues he'll bring up has to do with liability. While it's easy to say you'd like to get rid of infringing content, it's not always all that easy to identify. It's become common to use file sharing applications like BitTorrent to deliver video to paying consumers. If such transactions are mistaken for piracy, and subscribers disconnected as a result, ISPs don't want to be held liable.
To date no label or recording industry representative has volunteered to take on this financial responsibility. This is hardly surprising since the one constant in music ongoing struggle to build a new business model is the position that the financial burden belongs to everyone except themselves.