MusicTank, which describes itself as “a business development network for the UK music industry” formed the events around a simple premise,that “The creation of viable alternatives to unlicensed file sharing” has “the potential to produce the most satisfactory outcome for all stakeholders, including consumers.” This report features the conclusions from that event.

Much of the focus is positive as well, with strong points being made about the quality available from online services, their price comparison to physical sales and the worry ISPs share over the slippery slope of blocking content. However, one of the best summations of the current state of music and the Internet comes from Playlouder‘s Paul Sanders:

“The music business is putting a lot of effort into shouting at ISPs and comparatively little into selling them music”

This cuts to the core of the problem. No amount of Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) will change things if the entertainment industries are too busy complaining about others not doing what the industries think they should be doing, whilst those same industries are not doing what the customers think they should be doing.

On the other side of the coin though, there are major issues that barely get mentioned. Wrongful identification of copyright infringers – a topic we have covered extensively, with many examples in the past year alone – gets a single mention on page 9, from Carphone Warehouse representative Andrew Heaney, although he did note that it may be an infringement of consumer rights. However, that it gets only half a paragraph, while the quality and cost issue gets a page, is not encouraging.

The report as a whole highlights the problems facing everyone on all sides, but skimps on the consumer-side somewhat, while music industry claims are given somewhat exaggerated credence, despite the continued lack of supporting evidence. However, like last month’s Ipoque report, it seems that there is more balance being given to reports on this subject. Whether the people at Rand take note is a different matter.

The problem is, though, with major consumer issues given such quick mention, and with the many luminaries including the man behind the MoU – Secretary of State for Culture, Andy Burnham MP – present and participating, the issues that are not deemed very important in this report, may not be deemed as important to those involved. It may end up that that the unsubstantiated claims of loss by the music industry are deemed more important than the rights of citizens, and that’s not good for anyone.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Indeed, the IFPI have something specific in mind. They would like to ‘introduce an obligation on ISPs to terminate service to subscribers abusing the service to make infringing content available’. Potentially, that means terminating your internet access if you’re caught uploading one track. But if you prefer to take it literally, ‘making available’ means that a track sitting in your shared folder that you have never uploaded to anyone, could cost you your internet connection. Quite a punishment. To make matters worse, uploading is built into the BitTorrent protocol so using torrents and not falling foul of these demands becomes almost impossible.

Commenting on the meeting with Merkel, John Kennedy, Chairman of the IFPI said, “The international recording industry has now taken its concerns about the state of the German music market to the highest political level in Europe. We left the meeting appreciative of the fact that the Chancellor understood the nature of the problems we are facing and is willing to play a role in seeking a solution to them. If the German government acts now, we are confident that the German music industry could reverse the decline and be viable again in three to five years.”

According to the IFPI, 374 million illegal files were downloaded by German file-sharers in 2006 but the act of downloading (rather than uploading) appears to evade the scope of these demands by the IFPI. However, while this may be good news for users of other protocols, there is no good news for BitTorrent users. It’s very unusual to download something using BitTorrent without uploading so under these demands, even using BitTorrent to obtain material for personal use becomes an offense punishable by internet disconnection. Unfortunately, this comes at a time when the use of BitTorrent in Germany is reaching record highs.

Other complaints from the IFPI include the issue of piracy on the Czech/German border. Last month, as a result of IFPI action, a Czech court handed out it’s first ever jail sentence to a file-sharer. The IFPI plans to sue 12,000 file-sharers in 2007.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.