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Dunstone will go to court to fight three-strikes
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 29 January 2010
Carphone Warehouse top man Charlie Dunstone has again said he might fight three-strikes in court if his lobbying efforts to stop the anti-piracy system becoming law fails.
As much previously reported, Dunstone, in his role as boss of internet service provider TalkTalk, is among the most vocal of opponents to proposals in the UK government’s Digital Economy Bill that will force net firms to send warning letters to suspected file-sharers using their services, threatening to suspend those users’ internet connections if they don’t stop infringing copyright. Dunstone argues that content owners should have to sue suspected file-sharers directly, rather than involving him and his company, an involvement which will cost Charlie money and put him in the tricky position of having to discipline paying customers.
After his previously reported tea and cakes session in Westminster this week, in which he put various three-strike opponents in front of MPs and Lords, Dunstone told the Telegraph that if the DEB does become law his company will refuse to send out warning letters, and will consider “all options” for challenging three-strikes through the courts.
He continued: “I think there is a problem if an industry thinks its business model will be saved by legislation. While the music industry focuses on getting these laws through, it won’t be concentrating on reinventing its business – which it obviously needs to do as its model is out of date. Its customers have gone on strike and turned to piracy because the old model doesn’t work. There is no need to pursue this letter-sending and disconnection policy, when [record companies] can just individually prosecute people who have violated copyright rules”.
Of course, Dunstone deliberately ignores the fact that efforts to make three-strikes law are just one part of the record industry’s approach to the internet and that, after ten years of undeniably bad strategy, since 2008 the major record companies have actively started to embrace and support a number of engaging licensed music services that appeal to different parts of the market. While it’s true the deals behind some of those services need reworking if said services are going to be viable long term (and the case for collective licensing gets stronger as the months go by), that’s not why Dunstone et al ignore the plethora of DRM-free MP3 stores and exciting on-demand streaming services when assessing the music industry’s current approach to the internet.
For them, the record industry “reinventing its model” means licensing their music to ISPs for next to nothing, so that net firms who sacrificed their profit margins by engaging in a silly price war five years ago can create new revenues by becoming content providers, but without incurring any real new costs to generate that content. And despite the fact most ISP-run content services are rubbish.
Of course, Dunstone is right that three-strikes will only have a limited (and possibly nominal) impact on file-sharing, with more prolific file-sharers easily able to hide their illicit content dealing, and others taking their illegal sharing of music offline. However, even one of the groups wheeled into Westminster by the TalkTalk chief this week – consumer rights people Which? – admitted the three-strikes system was better than the anti-piracy programme Dunstone supports: record companies taking more music fans to court.
In related news, Music Week reports that Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw has said that he is confident that the Digital Economy Bill will make it through parliament before the General Election. Many doubt that it will, given it is yet to reach the House Of Commons, and there is opposition from various quarters to various parts of the legislation (and not just its copyright provisions). Though at MIDEM last weekend BPI chief Geoff Taylor said he remained optimistic the proposals could become law before parliament shuts down for the big vote, and Bradshaw said the same at a Musicians’ Union organised bash for political types held earlier this week.
