The music industry may need to cash in on Burnham's promise to "apply more pressure" on the ISPs to take on that anti-piracy role. Or at least they will if the representative of the net industry on the MusicTank panel last night is to be believed. Though he's still not convinced that, when push came to shove, the government would dare introduce rules that could lead to tens of thousands of voters losing their internet connections.
Richard Mollet, Public Affairs Director at record label trade body the BPI, said there had been "more movement on this issue than we could have dreamt possible" in the last year, and Simon Persoff , Director of Legal & Regulatory Affairs at mobile/net firm Orange, admitted the ISPs had been forced to shift their position because of government pressure. But the debate that ensued - and especially Persoff's comments - suggested that while the record companies and ISPs have signed that Memorandum Of Understanding, the consensus is mainly on the fact that "something should be done" about online piracy, and not on how it should be done and who should pay for it.
As previously mentioned, the MoU talks about education, enforcement and the creation of new licensed digital music services, probably provided by the ISPs directly. It's the latter where there seems to be disagreement, which is a problem because the ISPs want agreement on the new business models before committing to step up their education and enforcement activities. The ISPs insistence that agreements must be reached in all three areas is partly because of a "what's in it for us" philosophy, ie that to agree to unpopular and possibly costly measures to stop illegal file sharing there needs to be a commercial advantage to be gained in the form of new music-based revenue streams. Though they also argue that education and enforcement will only work if compelling new legit services are also available, and that that is also a reason why the three strands of the MoU debate are inseparable.
"Our discussions with the music industry have been both good and worrying" Persoff said. "My worry is that the music industry seems to still see the enforcement part of the MoU as being the primary objective of all this. My gut feeling is that, despite what they say, the BPI really wants the 'three strike then we cut you off' system, and that's their focus. Our focus is new models. We do want to find a way forward as much as the record companies - illegal P2P users are expensive for us too, because they use excessive amounts of bandwidth in a way that we can't commercialise. And we recognise that music is an important part of the content services we offer our customers, and that there is much potential there. But the record industry's current business models don't offer that potential. For this to work the record companies need to start really reevaluating the way they do business".
Despite all the highfalutin talk of new business models, insiders say that at the heart of the dispute between the ISPs and the record companies are good old fashioned arguments over price and data ownership - ie the wholesale price the labels will offer their music to the ISPs for, and who 'owns' the customer.
In some ways that's a good thing because in theory an agreement could be reached without someone having to develop this mythical dream business model that will make millions from digital music, though whether either side will be willing to move on price and customer access remains to be seen. Burnham may as yet have to turn his attention away from the global dimension and apply more pressure at home. Exactly where the pressure would be applied, especially as the next General Election appears on the horizon, remains to be seen.