The internet is a truly extraordinary achievement. It has transformed society, communication, entertainment and business.
Its impact on creativity has been profound. Particularly for my industry. The Web is, if you’ll excuse the pun, literally alive with the sound of music.
We can now experience and buy music online via iTunes, Amazon, 7digital, Bleep, Play, HMV, Tesco, Spotify, We7, MySpace Music, Sky Songs, Napster, eMusic and a host of others. Social networks revolve around music. You can even enjoy music bundled into the price of a mobile handset.
And yet there is still ambition to establish an even greater range of services.
Innovative services that cater for every taste and pocket, that allow audiences to safely and legitimately consume the music they want, by a method of their choosing.
But, vitally, we need services that can and do reward this country’s phenomenal creative talent, and all those who invest in them.
One of the major roadblocks to meeting this goal is the sheer scale of unlawful and unlicensed downloading. According to one internet service provider, TalkTalk, such usage over peer-to-peer networks can consume over 70% of their network’s capacity.
For those making and investing in music, film, TV, books, sports and games sustaining a viable business is, like all business, difficult at times. But when your products are being taken, for free, without your knowledge or consent, and on this scale, the consequences are grim.
As TalkTalk CEO, Charles Dunstone, highlighted in last week’s Daily Mail, the Government is looking to address such challenges with its Digital Economy Bill – revolutionising the UK’s telecommunications backbone while paving the way for a world-beating digital economy. I agree with Charles, that this is an admiral objective.
Yet there are some areas where our thinking differs.
Summoning visions of an “Orwellian nightmare”, Charles claims that the Bill will confer new powers to unaccountable record labels and film studios. That internet providers will be forced to disconnect any customer accused of copyright infringement. That we will all be victims of shadowy Wi-Fi hackers. And, to compound everything, he says we will all have to pick up the tab, to the tune of about £24 per year on the average broadband bill
Signs of a creative mind or just a case of excessive scare mongering? I suspect the latter.
In reality, Government’s proposals are pretty straightforward: the digital market will only reach its potential if our creative industries, internet providers, technology companies and consumers move forward together.
We are all part of the solution.
In the immediate term, the Digital Economy Bill would compel internet providers to dispatch letters to any customer found to be illegally downloading copyrighted works. The letters would advise on internet security and offer information about legal services.
All would be overseen by the communications regulator, Government and Parliament. At no point would a customer’s personal information change hands, unless by direct order of a court.
Only if these measures fail would further “technical measures” be considered, the ultimate of which might include temporary suspension of an internet account, but only as a last resort and only against the most persistent, determined and obstinate of repeat infringers.
Like both main political parties, UK Music agrees that such sanctions should not be taken lightly.
To be clear: the aim here is not to disconnect, but to reconnect audiences with the value of creativity. To engage with fans and to help, support and encourage them towards legal services.
The more progressive internet providers would appear to be supportive on this issue. Ironically, the sheer volume of unlicensed file sharing is hitting their business too – clogging networks, slowing broadband speeds and impacting upon the quality of service they provide to us, the customer.
I can now only think of one provider who would appear to persist in using the allure of content to win new customers. That would be Charles Dunstone’s TalkTalk, where a £6.99 per month connection comes with a “generous” 40GB download allowance, equivalent to “55 movies or 900 albums…or every single episode of Friends!”
900 albums per month? Obviously Charles will be expecting his customers to pay for all that content, otherwise I’m not quite sure what kind of message it sends to the general public.
I have huge respect for Charles, his ideas frequently border on genius. But on this occasion they are just plain wrong. Where I do hope we can once again agree is that the futures of creativity and technology are totally dependent upon each other.
That all of us must adapt, progress and develop, that we must secure a solid foundation from which we can build a successful, vibrant and world dominating British online industry. For our artists, performers, investors, shareholders, lovers and users of music everywhere, that can only be a very good thing.
Feargal Sharkey, CEO, UK Music
(An abridged version of this article appeared in the Daily Mail on January 25th: http://tinyurl.com/ye7t4qg)
