[A2k] Fwd: Legal, British P2P 'by end of year'

[Michelle Childs]

>
> If finalised, this  could mean that the UK will drop the idea of
> following the French three strikes approach
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>
> <snip>
> Legal, British P2P 'by end of year'
> ISP-music talks get serious>
> By Andrew Orlowski
> Published Thursday 26th June 2008 10:04 GMT

>
>> Exclusive Legal broadband subscription services that permit file
>> sharing may appear on the market by the year's end, according to
>> music industry sources - after government intervention brought both
>> music suppliers and ISPs to the table.
>>
>> The UK would become the second country after South Korea where the
>> music business has agreed to offer licenses to file sharing
>> services in a bid to reverse declining revenues. The co-operation
>> follows the intervention of "Brown's Fist", the former advisor and
>> Parliamentary Under-Secretary at BERR (the Department for Business,
>> Enterprise & Regulatory Reform) Baroness Shriti Vadera. Vadera is
>> understood to have threatened both the ISP and music businesses
>> with reform and policy intervention, threats which encouraged both
>> parties to open negotiations.
>>
>> The government is understood to be extremely reluctant to intervene
>> with legislation as it threatened to do earlier this year, and
>> cross-industry agreement to offer attractive consumer broadband
>> music services would mean it wouldn't have to.
>>
>> No deals have been signed yet and significant details have yet to
>> be addressed. These include the royalty share between mechanical,
>> sound recording and publishing rights holders, and administration
>> issues. A significant amount of music released has never been
>> licensed digitally - so should a music service provider ignore it,
>> or attempt to pay the owners? As for price, this will be determined
>> by the ISPs. However, sources are confident that Q4 2008 or Q1 2009
>> will see such the first of these offered to the public.
>>
>> The move would represent the most radical supply-side reform ever
>> considered by the music business in the modern era.
>>
>> The major difference between the next generation of broadband-
>> backed subscription schemes that are now under discussion, and
>> those in operation today, is that future services would permit and
>> encourage exchanges of music between subscribers. Most of today's
>> subscription services such as eMusic and Napster permit the
>> subscriber to download songs but not share them. There are
>> exceptions: Omnifone's licensed mobile service Music Station
>> permits "sharing" - Music Station subscribers can share playlists
>> and the receiving device is populated with songs centrally over the
>> network. QTrax offers a legal P2P service but this is ad-supported,
>> rather than subscription-based.
>>
>> The services require copyright holders to suspend, albeit privately
>> and voluntarily, the exclusive right to copy a sound recording, in
>> exchange for a license (and no doubt financial guarantees).
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> This is a long article with a graph embedded in it. For rest of
> article use this link:
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/26/music_service_provider_talks/
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> Michelle Childs
> Head of European Affairs
> Knowledge Ecology International
> www.keionline.org / www.cptech.org
> Phone:+44(0)207 226 6663 ex 252
> Email: michelle.childs@cptech.org
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