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Industry may start pushing for legislation on net-piracy policing as ISP negotiations falter

By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 20 January 2009

Whether it’s led by UK Music or the BPI or another trade body, someone may need to step up their lobbying activity regarding making internet service providers take more responsibility for tackling online piracy.

As much previously reported, record label trade body the BPI and six ISPs last year signed a memorandum of understanding which saw the net firms commit send out warning letters to suspected file sharers as a way of preparing the ground for more detailed discussions on how the record companies and net firms could work together to combat piracy and collaborate on new digital music services that could be bundled into ISP’s monthly subscriptions.

There have been mixed rumours on how those talks are going – but Orange’s Director of Legal & Regulatory Affairs, Simon Persoff, didn’t seem to confident any agreement would be reached when speaking at a recent MusicTank Think Tank on the issue. And now Digital Music News say they’ve seen a BPI report recently submitted to government concluding that voluntary measures acceptable to both the labels and the ISPs will not now be achieved, and legislation will be required.

The report reads thus: “A purely self-regulatory or voluntary approach to dealing with illegal file-sharing has been attempted between BPI and ISPs but, for various reasons, has not been successful. The MoU is not likely to achieve the objective of a significant reduction in illegal file-sharing unless it is underpinned by new statutory obligations on ISPs”.

Whether this means label/ISP talks are now off I’m not sure, though there does seem, for the first time, to be growing support in the UK industry for the model adapted by the French government in this domain – creating a government agency that polices online piracy, and has the power to force ISPs to cut off persistent copyright infringers.

The government has previously indicated it would legislate in the labels’ favour on this issue – indications which persuaded the ISPs to come to the negotiating table in the first place. Though, as Persoff said at the aforementioned MusicTank event, with a General Election now likely in the next 18 months, is the government really going to bring in new laws that could lead to a certain percentage of the population losing their internet connections? And after that election, it might not be Burnham and friends the industry needs to persuade.

Still, artist manager Peter Jenner seems convinced government can be persuaded to act if and when negotiations between the two industries fail. Digital Music News quote him thus: “It’s naive to think that the government doesn’t have a role. If not, they will witness a collapse of the content industries”.