The Globe and Mail has a story on how the Music industry takes hit in court. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that ISPs are just conduits and therefore cannot be monitor or pay for music downloading by individuals.
A quote from the Globe article on page A1,
"The capacity of the Internet to disseminate works of the arts and intellect is one of the great innovations of the information age," Mr. Justice Ian Binnie said for the majority.
On page A2, Casey Chisick, a lawyer/expert in the field is quoted as saying,
“The music industry can’t be expected to stand idly by and watch as entire generations of consumers treat music as a free commodity. Something has got to give, and it will.”
The question then is, “Who and how will music be paid for?” Here is my list of options:
- The music industry through various tactics will force P2P online music downloading (as opposed to commercial services like iTunes Music Store) out to margins where it doesn’t threaten them. Never underestimate a rich lobby group and their lawyers.
- The music industry will spam the P2P networks with versions of music that have ads in them and make downloading and checking a pain.
- Commerical musicians will write tunes with embedded ads so that wide distribution is welcomed by advertisers paying for high production.
- Live performances and web casts become the way music is paid for; the recorded music becomes a lost leader.
- The music publishing industry gets its act together and makes it easy to pay for tunes and the problem goes away. (See option one.)
Kirk Makin and Simon Avery. “Music industry takes hit in court; Internet providers won’t have to pay download royalties”. The Globe and Mail, Thursday, July 1, 2004. Page A1 and continued on A2.