BERR consultation responses - “02”

In reference to BERR response “p2p – 02 – FOI.PDF”

First of all, the identity of this person is redacted, albeit pointlessly. The author is Bennett Lincoff, which is easily to determine from the first page alone (of the 14 submitted). I wish I knew why the BERR took the strange step of not only removing the person's identity, but also of redacting some of the supporting links in the footnotes, perhaps because the URL is for Bennett's site, BennettLincoff.com. When you also take into account the professional experience he has, it's unusual they bothered to remove his name at all – 15 seconds of searching at most is all it would take anyone to do this.

Mr Lincoff does has some things to say that might surprise people who just look at his professional past. Page 3 exemplifies this. “It seems that whatever the final particulars, the enhanced enforcement regime contemplated by BERR will likely rely on highly intrusive means and *draconian punishments that are disproportionate to the seriousness of the actions* they are intended to deter. Because of this, *it represents a policy initiative of dubious merit*. In any event, as discussed below, *unauthorized P2P file-sharing is not even the primary cause* of the music industry's decade-long decline” (emphasis mine) and indeed the first 5½ pages are a discussion of why the music industry's situation is what it is. While none of the points are new to those who have followed this subject for years, it's nice to have someone that worked in the music industry, in a policy position, say these things out loud.

The main gist of the response thereafter is an interesting idea, that of the 'digital transmission license', one which collectively and jointly replaces the analogue-era collection of rights – broadcast rights, reproduction rights, performance rights etc. – and their resulting royalties. Instead the one license covers all, and is jointly owned by the songwriter, artist, producer and publisher. The right may be granted by any party, they just have to account for the royalties to the other partners.

However, where Mr Lincoff has mainly done well in accepting the technological realities of peer-to-peer sharing, one area he apparently doesn't understand is decentralized systems. “On the other hand, distributors of file-sharing software for decentralized networks who with to secure licenses for their services could do so if they configured future releases of their software to exercise certain key measures of control over the file- and streaming-sharing that the software enabled.” The Problem here is that such a decentralized network, for example Bittorrent, is an open specification. Anyone can write a client, which will work with others, and the basis of the protocol is uploading as you're downloading. Any client with such measures would quickly be ignored, and older clients, or new clients without such restrictions, would be used instead. It's not that far fetched, as a number believe recent versions of the utorrent client monitor actions, and refuse to use a version later than 1.6.1. Despite being factually untrue (and I have checked), it has still persisted for more than 2 years.

Overall, it's a good idea, if somewhat impractical. If it were implemented, then it may also make things easier and cheaper for both consumers, and artists, although at the expense of the labels, who would lose out on the 'double-dipping' of licenses they currently employ. It is, however, hard to argue with his final conclusion. “I suggest, however, that BERR refrain from making matters worse by requiring ISPs to act as enforcers on behalf of copyright holders.”

Consultation analysis overview

FTC - Failures to Comment?

I've just spent the last 8 hours or more listening to the FTC webcast on DRM.

I've submitted several questions, and an associate of mine, Andrew Norton of the Pirate Party International, submitted serveral too. Between us, we had 4-5 read out. Only ONE was actually read out in full, and it was not really followed up; in some instances questions ended mid-sentence when read out, leading to some unusual and awkward silences as the questions often didn't make sense.

It seems the FTC may have gotten a skewed view, because whoever was handling questions failed to communicate them accurately. When the transcripts are published (because their system failed when attempts were made to save the transcript on the webcast)  I'll show the comparison between what was asked, and what was read out.

Broadband Maps and 'We never saw bittorrent comming'

Having spent a good part of today watching some of the Department of Commerce's (DOC) roundtable about the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, it seems there's a lot of talk and little action. One thing that came up was there is little desire to make businesses accountable and serve the public, because it might put people off (although they also acknowledge that very few turn down the money talked about here). Something eye-opening was that the FCC considers an entire zip-code (postal code) covered by broadband, if one address in it has broadband service.

The problem is, that in the rural areas, with the problems of access to broadband, zipcodes can cover huge areas – sometimes 150 square miles or more – and also contain towns and rural areas. A friend of TorrentFreak's researcher lives in such an area, living a 25-30 minute drive out of town, up and over a mountain in rural Georgia, and yet they've still got the city zip-code. It's something that needs revamping urgently, so that an accurate picture of what there is to work from can be found.

It wasn't all boring figures though, as in the morning session, on 'nondiscrimination and interconnection obligations', one remark in some ways showed the depths of the problem. Chris Guttman-McCabe, Vice President for Regulatory affairs at the Wireless Association (CTIA) said, and I quote “I'm not sure anyone would have known what bittorrent was two years ago, but now it's at the center of how we look at discrimination cases and such, but we will be looking back saying 'what the heck we had no clue as to what network management meant at the time'”. (You can find it in the official transcript, but as it's a text2speech system, search for 'bit torn')

We have major sites that have been around for 4-5 years, and the FBI knows about bittorrent (elitetorrents) as did the White House (the pirate bay) so why doesn't 'The Wireless Association'? Who knows, but it seems someone should be asking them that.

Rand Corp joins ITfIPA's crazytrain

A few years back, I wrote about some extremely misleading stats published by the ITfIPA (Industry Trust for IP Awareness) and the involvement of terrorists. Imagine my surprise today then, when I read of a study by the Rand Corporation, which makes similar claims, and lo and behold, it also uses counterfeiting stats, to mean 'movie piracy' (the two terms are NOT interchangable). No prizes for guessing who funded this study.... yep the MPAA.

I guess the easiest way to get what they want, is to make people afraid, especially lawmakers. Bogus, and stretched statistics do that well. Expect some debunking to appear shortly, either here, or on torrentfreak.com