Here we go again with more nonsense from the British Phonographic Industry. The music industry body has managed to negotiate itself an agreement with internet service providers that actually costs the music industry money, will be proved to be totally ineffectual, and – far worse from the artists' perspective – will further drive a wedge between them and their remaining paying audience.
The agreement between ISPs and the BPI to send letters of an "educational" tone to persistent illegal downloaders illustrates two things about the moribund major label system: firstly, that it still has no understanding of the internet, but more alarmingly that is has no idea whatsoever about its customers.
From my position as a solo artist currently a long way down from the premier league of major label acts, the very notion of sending out letters is so out of touch it's almost funny. The thing about persistent illegal downloaders is they will never stop – it's now a lifestyle. For an industry built on selling ersatz rebellion to teenagers, finding the moral high ground was always going to be tricky.
The BPI can send all the letters it wants, it won't stop one pirate. In fact, it will do the opposite – it will confirm any illegal downloader's suspicions that the labels are only after cash for their shareholders rather than being concerned about fans, music or artists. As usual, the music industry has picked the wrong enemy. There is a huge difference between a site like Megaupload or the Pirate Bay, both empires built on vast amounts of illegally distributed copyrighted material, and an avid individual music lover with broad tastes but shallow pockets. Those larger pirate sites have been hounded on to proxy servers and will eventually retreat on to the darknet where, guess what, some people will still find and download stuff for free.
It's also tough for the record industry to be claiming to fight the good fight on behalf of artists when it, and digital behemoths such as Google, YouTube and Spotify, hide behind non-disclosure agreements, so as an artist I am not allowed to know what legal deals have been done in my name. Yes, I signed the contract, yes I saw the clause about rights for all media be they extant or yet to be invented (seriously?), and yes I have benefited from major label marketing budgets, so I am definitely one of the lucky ones. But if the BPI wants artists to help them on their mission to "educate" a generation of digital natives who believe all culture is free, then perhaps a good starting point would be to publish the details of their online deals so that fans and artists alike could agree on what's fair.
Of course I want a functioning model to exist, and I want to keep doing music full time – but dabbling clumsily in the murky waters of internet freedom immediately puts the BPI on the wrong side of the argument. It may simply be a misguided attempt to reassure shareholders that they are doing all they can to push people towards legal streaming sites, which are yet to turn a profit; but whatever their intentions, illegal downloaders, genuine supporters of music and I'm sure most artists all get the same bad taste in our mouths.
The ISPs, too, are being disingenuous by claiming that stopping or tracking illegally distributed copyrighted material is too difficult. Too expensive and time consuming, certainly. Search engines also still list pirate sites at the top of their results – Google was recently issued with its 100 millionth take down notice. What happened? Nothing.
Everything tagged with metadata can be tracked and potentially remunerated, but why would ISPs or data-hoovering giant tech companies take any responsibility for content when, as they claim, they are merely a conduit? Some might call it fencing stolen goods, but the music industry can't afford to make enemies of these companies for obvious reasons, so instead they've opted for a toothless threat to alienate fans – who, I'll bet, go to more gigs and buy more merchandise than your casual legal streamer. And to top it all off, the BPI are paying vast sums of money to the ISPs to carry out this idiotic mission.
Perhaps the £750,000 per ISP would have been better invested in a genuine campaign to educate or promote debate about the future of all arts in a digital economy. Or, whisper it, even spent on new artists who could attract an audience back to music, an audience bored by the quick return, integrity-free pop designed to separate pre-teens from their pocket money. It's just a thought.
