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20 MusicWeek 22.06.12 FEATURE ANTI-PIRACY
HEALTH CHECK HOW IS THE INDUSTRY DOING IN THE FIGHT AGAINST PIRACY?
actually the ones flying around in gold-plated jets – not the music industry.” Dotcom’s arrest provided a vital snapshot of the
shift in power between music’s right-holders and the piracy sites – and a stark reminder of who some believe the music industry’s anti-piracy battalion should be directly targeting. “Part of the real piracy problem is those sites
hosting infringing files who sell advertising on the back of the vast traffic they attract,” says Jon Webster, CEO of the Music Managers Forum. “Making money in this way without sharing with rights-holders is indefensible. No smart brand should want to be associated with such behaviour. “We should concentrate our efforts on discouraging
companies from being seen to be supporting this type of illegal activity. Shut off the funds to these sites and they have less reason to exist. That’s an achievable, practical measure we can all support.” Yet while the industry is in complete agreement
GEOFF TAYLOr, BPI
Until the late 1990s, piracy was largely a physical format problem dominated by the trade in counterfeit CDs and DVDs – often linked
to organised crime. This hasn’t disappeared. BPI’s regional investigators still work with police and local authorities and have successfully cleaned up many markets and car boot sales rife with counterfeits and closed down internet operations selling counterfeit discs to millions around the world. But it’s digital piracy which grabs the headlines. And we’ve made significant
progress on many fronts: Years of lobbying resulted in the 2010 Digital Economy Act – a potential turning point in combating illegal P2P, but one which this Government has been much
too slow in implementing; BPI started a new programme in 2011 delisting links on Google and now removes around 200,000 illegal search results per month, making us the second biggest remover of content from Google in the world, after Microsoft. You can see the impact in the many “Chilling Effects” notices at the bottom of search
pages; This year our automated robots will find and send takedown notices to websites and cyberlockers for at least
12 million infringing music files; We have now blocked most UK consumers’ access to The Pirate Bay
in the UK; We raised the issue of ranking of illegal and legal sites by search engines and have established it firmly on the political agenda for the upcoming
Communications Act; We are negotiating a Code of Practice with internet advertisers to ensure that reputable brands and networks do not generate advertising revenue for
pirate sites; And working with Paypal, Visa and other payment providers we have been
able to cut revenue streams to illegal sites that profit at the expense of musicians. None of these are silver bullets. But
they are all steps towards reducing the impact of illegal sites and boosting legal sales of music. What we need now is similar commitment from other stakeholders. For years, ISPs and search companies
have been silently benefitting from piracy while claiming it is the music industry’s fault for not updating its business model for the digital age. We have reinvented our business. It’s now time they stopped clinging to the outdated model of subsidising their revenues with money made from illegal activity. And it’s time for this Government to prove it supports its creative industries with action, not just words and roundtables.
LEE MORRISON, BELIEVE DIGITAL I think the progress around anti-piracy has been way too slow. People shout a lot about it but never want to assign budget to help deal
with it. There is lots left to do but the two main points for me are educating people as to why its bad to steal music and needing the search engines to block links to illegal sites. In the old days people targeted the
bootlegger or manufacturer of the illegal content, today with online piracy it seems that we are targeting the actual people sharing the content. This is the wrong approach and we need to educate people.
ADRIAN POPE, PIAS
After a slow start and various failed approaches there’s now a reasonable balance between pro-active ‘education’ of media
and consumers and the legal targeting of mass infringers and successful lobbying toward legislative and
governmental support. There were a number of stakeholders (government, consumers, telco’s, artists, labels etc) that needed to be aligned in a cohesive approach and that’s obviously taken longer than most would have hoped but there’s a sense that the last couple of years has seen some tangible progress. Piracy is still rife and a major issue
but green shoots are showing - not least due to the development of this more cohesive strategy.
JO DIPPLE, UK MUSIC
We are making progress, albeit slowly. The BPI, a member of UK Music, has doggedly pursued anti-piracy measures on behalf
of the industry and its artists, and successfully secured web-blocking injunctions against The Pirate Bay. The BPI should be widely praised for
leading the way and the industry is grateful for the ongoing anti-piracy work they manage. Going forwards, UK Music hopes the implementation of the DEA will create a regulatory framework that puts effective obligations on ISPs to tackle damaging and widespread copyright infringement in a more structured and less legally time consuming and costly manner. The tackling of Pirate Bay (inset) sent
a clear message to ISPs that such sites damage creative business; they repel investment and will damage the UK’s growth prospects. This isn’t so much an industry issue as a public policy matter for anyone with an interest in the UK’s future economic success.
that starving file-sharing sites of advertising revenue is a clever move, its efforts in the anti-piracy fight are also focused elsewhere – with mixed success. The BPI is fighting to cut off the conduit for
such advertising at the source. It calls on search giants to stop listing links to copyright-infringing torrent sites – and for Google to stop profiting from Google Ads placed on infringing P2P platforms. Both demands, despite an official draft Code Of Practice being sent to Government in January, have so far fallen on deaf ears. “Worse than the excessive influence of companies
like Google [at Governmental level] is the sheer determination to preserve and protect the illegal use of their services, to their own economic benefit; and their consistent scaremongering and misrepresentation of any initiatives or legislation to reduce online piracy,” says BPI CEO Geoff Taylor. “I hope that in the coming year more people will begin to question how ethical this behaviour is.” Another target of anti-piracy lobbying from the
record industry – and an acronym sure to make label CEOs choke on their morning coffee – is internet service providers (ISPs); a battle against whom the trade can claim at least one major recent victory. On April 30, the BPI won a High Court order to
force internet service providers (ISPs) such as TalkTalk, Virgin Media, Sky and O2 to block users’ access to notorious file-sharing site The Pirate Bay. Although one significant name was missing from the roll call, BT promises Music Week that it won’t stand in the way of the ruling’s impetus. “BT has consistently stated that copyright
infringement is wrong,” says a company spokesperson. “The court has decided that Pirate Bay should be blocked and we intend to do this. We anticipate receiving a court order shortly in respect of The Pirate Bay.” However, the industry paints a less rosy picture of
the ISPs’ co-operation over discouraging users from accessing file-sharing sites. A recent Daily Mail investigation exposed both BT and TalkTalk operatives selling broadband packages on their ability to enable quick torrenting. And then there’s the issue that causes the most intra-industry chagrin: certain ISPs have also repeatedly sought to block the Digital Economy Act – legislation that would see consumers receive warning letters if found to be illegally downloading. “The rights holders and tech companies are like the Brits and the Germans in WW1 firing at each