Fighting piracy is not a goal in itself
This a personal view by Steve Redmond and does not
necessarily represent the views of ERA
Half the problem with lobbying politicians and government
officials is you never quite know what they say when you're not in
the room.
For years it has been a ritual of music and creative
industry lobbying to invite some political notable to your
AGM/House of Commons reception/foreign trade mission and then
listen while they recite back to you the pre-prepared
brief.
Over the years I've counted them out and then counted them
back in again - Chris Smith, Estelle Morris, Kim Howells, Geoff
Hoon, James Purnell, Sean Woodward, that slimy fellow from the BBC-
and it's always the same routine: "our greatest cultural
export/worth more than the coal mining industry (strange claim that
one)/Beatles/Arctic Monkeys/creators deserve to be
recompensed/piracy is rubbish blah blah.."
Which is all well and good, except you never quite know
what they say when you're no longer in the room.
And which is why the music and creative industries should
take heart from an event which took place yesterday at the BT Tower
organised by lobbying group Business for New Europe, addressed by
Culture Minister Ed Vaizey and EC Commissioner for the Digital
Single Market Neelie Kroes, who is quickly shaping up to be one of
the most important figures in determining the shape of creative
industries in Europe.
This wasn't the usual music or creative industries
set-piece event. There appeared to be no one there from the music
business apart from the two ERA members who were speaking,
Amazon.co.uk MD Brian McBride and Rarewaves founder Brad
Aspess.
And yet both Vaizey and Kroes said much that could have
come straight from the mouth of UK Music's Feargal Sharkey or the
BPI's Geoff Taylor.
Vaizey praised the measures to tackle piracy in the
Digital Economy Act, measures he said - in a pop at some of the
Act's critics - which are "not nearly as draconian as some people
think".
Kroes stressed the importance of artists being paid for
their work. "We should educate young people that (otherwise)
there won't be new artists, there won't be new music," she
said.
And yet from both there was a strong subtext that
while the music industry may have won the argument on piracy, the
argument has now moved on.
"Fighting piracy is not a goal in itself," said Kroes as
she laid into some of the real barriers to trade across
Europe. The real goal is to open up the digital market in
Europe.
How can it be, she asked, that it is relatively easy to
ship a CD from territory to territory within Europe, but virtually
impossible to sell a download from one country to
another?
"Digitisation has fundamentally changed content
industries," she said, "but licensing models simply have not kept
up with this."
Collection societies, she said, "are playing a really
negative role".
All this would be of purely academic interest were it not
for other developments and various off-the-record hints and tips in
recent months suggesting that the creative industries may be about
to find that relations with government are about to enter a new and
potentially more uncomfortable phase.
The Hargreaves review of intellectual property law in the
UK is currently looking at whether copyright law is hindering the
development of new digital business models.
In this light the established record industry demands to
combat piracy and extend the term of copyright with nothing else on
the table is beginning to look outdated.
The message from Kroes is that in pursuit of a Digital
Single Market, everything is on the table.
For their part entertainment retailers are becoming
increasingly frustrated at the slow pace of change on some of these
issues. Increasingly people are questioning the wisdom of copyright
laws which mean in the UK it is still technically a copyright
infringement to rip CDs to your iPod. How can this be right in an
age of cloud computing? And how can we expect consumers to respect
copyright law when copyright law in these cases is clearly no
longer fit for purpose?
The lawyers and professional lobbyists who have managed
the content industry's relationship with Government have
undoubtedly done a good job in putting piracy on the agenda. That
argument has now been won - whether we're in the room or
not.
The question for the coming months and years is whether
that lobbying should now be informed by more pragmatic and more
commercial voices.