Yay, just what everyone wants on a cloudy Thursday morning, complicated copyright news. A consortium of UK music industry bodies, led by the Association Of Independent Music, yesterday called for a change in British copyright law which would enable artists, songwriters, labels and publishers to claim a 'Value Recognition Right' over their work. That call came at a 'round table discussion' on the future of copyright in the digital age, timed to coincide with the release of an AIM report on the topic.
Now, I'm no expert on this Value Recognition Right malarkey, but from what I can make out it would enable content owners to charge a licence fee of some sort to any company that commercially benefits from the distribution of their music. The main target here are the internet service providers (who seem to be target number one for the music business this week) who, under the proposed new law, would have to pay for a VRR licence because copyright music is moving across their networks, even though they themselves might not be moving it.
That is to say, while the ISP might not be distributing music via its own portals or channels, because its customers are using its network to 'move' music, possibly via P2P networks, they would be liable to pay a licence fee anyway. The logic behind the idea is that internet companies have benefited greatly from the movement of music over their networks, because it is the facility to move and share music that has persuaded many people to sign up to broadband services. Therefore, the content owners say, the ISPs should have to pay in 'recognition of the value' they get from music.
The ISPs would, of course, pass that cost on to their customers, but that's the point - the aim isn't to make ISPs hand over a share of their profits to the music business, rather to force them to take commercial responsibility for what their customers do with copyright music. If the ISPs took on this responsibility, advocates of the system argue, then the music business would no longer need to sue individual music fans for P2P usage (a practice long opposed by AIM), because those individuals would be able to legally share music under their ISP's VRR licences - which they would be funding through their internet connection fees.
Of course, this proposed model isn't entirely new. The emerging legit P2P companies, like Mashboxx and iMesh, while not ISPs, would essentially operate in a similar way - licencing music from the content owners that can then be shared by their customers, who will pay a subscription fee that pays the licencing costs. And there have been previous proposals to merge the legit P2P concept in with an ISP service - so that a user gets to legally share music via P2P as part of their standard internet service provider package, their ISP having a VRR licence so to offer such a service. The most prominent UK player in that domain is PlayLouder MSP, which is backed by a number of key players in the UK indie sector (in fact it's possible to interpret yesterday's copyright consortium as the lobbying strand of a movement for which PlayLouder is the commercial strand - though formally that's not the case).
Speaking after yesterday's round table event, AIM boss Alison Wenham confirmed the consortium's support of VRR, and said she would be passing on the group's findings to Andrew Gowers who, as previously reported, is currently reviewing UK copyright laws. Wenham: "We believe the Value Recognition Right is the most innovative potential answer to problems which current applications of Copyright Law cannot properly deal with".
Among the other organisations supporting the proposals is the always mysterious British Music Rights, whose chief, Emma Pike, told reporters: "Copyright law currently does not provide us with the complete set of tools we need in order to enter into a commercial relationship with the new breed of music distributors. The Value Recognition Right is a groundbreaking new approach which we look forward to developing further together with our industry partners"
British Academy chair David Ferguson also supported the move saying: "For too long the ISPs and telcos have shirked their responsibilities, using music as a tool to sell their own services, whilst making little effort to ensure fair payment to its creators. A Value Recognition Right would be an eminently sensible step in at last addressing how creators can earn a living in a digital world."
While Jazz Summers, chairman of the Music Manager Forum said, "The music industry is becoming increasingly important to the prosperity of the UK economy and yet creators, performers, record companies and publishers are finding themselves increasingly exposed to widespread illegal uses of their works. New regulations are urgently needed to bring ISPs into the value chain and give them real responsibility as an important and valuable partner in the process of online distribution."
Quite how the VRR system would work isn't entirely clear. Whether blanket licences akin to those in broadcasting would be made available, and whether the major labels would sign up to such blanket licences, and whether that would impact on legit download platforms by essentially legitimising P2P, and whether the whole system could operate within existing EU copyright structures, and whether anyone can stay awake long enough to answer all those questions is not clear.
Certainly the quite well connected internet companies are not likely to welcome any moves that force them to acquire new licences to operate. A spokesman for the Internet Services Providers Association yesterday told the BBC: "ISPs bear no liability for illegal file sharing as the content is not hosted on their servers. Although such files may be transmitted across an ISP's network, ISPs are 'mere conduits' of information, as per the E-Commerce Regulations 2002. ISPs are no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope."