Reuters
Music execs vow to go after ISPs in piracy war
Friday January 24, 2:55 pm ET
LONDON, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Music industry officials on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday vowed to keep up the fight against online music swapping, piling pressure on Internet service providers (ISPs) to police their networks.
The issue of whether Internet and technology companies should be compelled to assist the major music labels in the fight against piracy, which is blamed for slumping CD sales, was headline news this week at the music industry's annual confab in the French resort town of Cannes.
At the conference, Internet executives reacted sharply to comments made by Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) Chief Executive Hilary Rosen who said ISPs should be held more accountable in monitoring illicit song-trading.
On Friday, Rosen told Reuters the RIAA would continue to work with lawmakers and the industry to root out song traders.
She said the trade body has no plans to develop compulsory licensing arrangements or impose fees on ISPs to recoup sales lost to file-trading. "That would be a dramatic departure (from the RIAA's strategy)," she said.
BATTLE IN EUROPE
In Europe, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a global trade organisation, has been waging a war of its own, battling to push forward the Copyright Directive, EU legislation that has stalled at the state level.
If passed, the Copyright Directive would require Internet service providers to play a more vigilant role in the protection of copyright-protected materials. The ISPs have challenged the directive on ground that it puts them in the costly role of having to police their customers.
Only two of 15 EU member countries have ratified the directive. ISPs, telecommunications companies and now manufacturers of hardware devices such as CD-burners, have sought to have protections afforded by the directive limited, to the chagrin of the music industry.
"This directive was the subject of a hard-fought compromise at the EU level between all the players. It is really bad faith that certain parties are trying to renegotiate this directive at the national level," Frances Moore, European regional director for the IFPI, told Reuters.
The IFPI said it faces the biggest opposition in Germany, Finland and the Netherlands.
The recording industry believes it has little time to spare. CD sales are expected to fall again this year, the fourth consecutive year, as the popularity of so-called peer-to-peer (P2P) trading networks such as Kazaa and Grokster grows.
A study released on Friday by U.S. software firm Websense said file-sharing sites continue to proliferate with more than 130 unique P2P applications and 89,000 Web pages dedicated to file-sharing, representing a 300 percent rise from a year ago.
The industry did win a major victory in the United States this week when a federal court judge said telecoms giant Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ - News) must identify a prolific song downloader, an individual who pulled more than 600 songs per day off file-sharing sites.
In Europe, the IFPI intends to step up pressure on state and EU lawmakers so that national laws are strengthened to curtail downloading practices.
The world's major music companies include Vivendi Universal (Paris:EAUG.PA - News; NYSE:V - News), Bertelsmann AG's (BERT.UL) BMG, EMI Group Plc (London:EMI.L - News), Sony Corp.'s (Tokyo:6758.T - News; NYSE:SNE - News) Sony Music and AOL Time Warner Inc.'s (NYSE:AOL - News) Warner Music.
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