Tomorrow’s digital licensing: what are the issues?
If you bought into all the hubris about the ‘inevitable’ demise of charging for content, you might imagine that debating the future of licensing was pointless. Or just dull. Watching this might change your mind
Frustration, despair, bewilderment, optimism, explanations, answered and unanswered questions. This debate may not be in any way conclusive and the coverage is certainly not exhaustive, but far from being pointless or dead, the subject of licensing seems very much alive in the minds of both the powerful and the voiceless.
These panel sessions were held as part of the Midem 2010 IAEL event. The video covered speakers from several different sessions.
I’ve tried to convey the essence of some of the comments in the video which caught my attention:
Chairman of the first session, Stephen Masur, Senior Managing Partner, MasurLaw (USA):
- “Can collective licensing work?”:
Todd Brabec, former Executive Vice-President, ASCAP (US): “It definitely works, but it needs:
- good metadata
- good transparency
- reciprocal agreements with collection societies for all parties and countries”
Peter Jenner, Founder, Sincere Management (UK):
- need to define parameters within which negotiations should occur
- don’t think one solution fits all
Bob Kohn, Co-founder, Chairman and CEO, Royalty Share (US):
- there has to be competition between collection services
Ralph Simon, Co-founder, Chairman and CEO, Royalty Share (US):
- “Is collective licensing working?”
John Simson, Executive Director, Sound Exchange (US):
- it’s effective for certain types of revenue streams
Cees Van Rij, Director of Legal Affairs, Buma/Stemra (Netherlands):
- we should be looking at a licensing system whereby we grant the license to the consumers via the ISPs
Simon Wheeler, Director, Strategy , Beggar’s Group (UK):
- collective licensing seems to be appearing more and more frequently now
- he thinks it’s not the preferred solution for music
- think it’s the way it’s going, because the market is so dysfunctional at the moment
- you need a commercial incentive for ISPs to be helping us protect our content
- the only way to do this is if they are part of the value chain
- they need to add value
- just slapping a rate on … doesn’t create any more value for anyone
- they need to effectively become a retailer
- they’ve got to have a real incentive to help us protect our content from being shared without any revenues coming back to us
- if collective licensing is going to be the way forward, there needs to be a fair and transparent mechanism to ensure that the money goes back to the correct rights holder
- the only real solution is a global rights database
- it needs to be a ‘one stop data base’
- it needs to be controlled by a ‘not for profit’
- it needs to be transparent
- it needs to have easy and fair access
This article led me to find more information on collective licensing. I found this article on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Collective_Licensing
It says, “Voluntary Collective Licensing is a theoretical solution for the problem of software piracy that would harness the power of file sharing technologies.”
Seems to be offering a solution to the software piracy. May be it can also be used for paying artists for their music albums too.
Surely it could. You can find more on that here:
http://www.eff.org/wp/better-way-forward-voluntary-collective-licensing-music-file-sharing
Would it ever catch up? Hard to tell to be honest, not 100% convinced myself.
The first thing that EFF says is, “artists and copyright holders deserve to be fairly compensated.”
Can’t agree more!
Sure they do deserve to be compensated for their work, no doubt about that.
What is not convincing for me in this whole scheme – would artists and companies be interested in such solution?
You are right there. ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) had requested their members to fight organizations like Creative Commons, Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation over what it claims as an effort to undermine copyright.
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/89494/ascap-declares-war-on-free-culture/
“At this moment,” the letter says, “we are facing our biggest challenge ever. Many forces including Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and technology companies with deep pockets are mobilizing to promote “Copyleft” in order to undermine our “Copyright.” They say they are advocates of consumer rights, but the truth in these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music. Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free.”
Simon Wheeler does have some very interesting insights into the problem. Although, in my view, he seems to be more concerned about companies’ revenue, not the problem of collective licensing as such, not so much of ‘how’ to do it, but rather ‘what’ needs to be in it, so companies rights are covered.
As Cees Van says about granting the license to the consumers via the ISPs, does that means ISP would be charging their consumers.
At the ground level – I think this is what he means. It can be part of monthly fee consumer pays to ISP for their service. It might be an extra feature from your ISP, when you pay it – file sharing websites/software won’t be blocked on your connection and such. This is how I imagine Cees Van idea in making.
Yes, it could be a premium service.
While researching subject of collective licensing, I have found this interesting news from beginning of this year:
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i21640ce071c3e4cec30129942bcada47
‘Although the proposal is fiercely denounced by most of the recording industry, Mitterrand confirmed the music sector had a year to agree on a “possible” collective licensing scheme for online music, as previously announced by President Sarkozy.
When asked by Billboard.biz about the meaning of the word “possible,” he then stated his determination to end up with a collective licensing scheme, otherwise, he added, the “possibility” will turn out to be an “obligation”.’
Would be really interested to see how it ends up in France.
Electronic Frontier Foundation also talks about something similar.
http://w2.eff.org/share/legal.php
“What happens if copyright holders refuse to grant licenses at any price? It wouldn’t be the first time; this situation arose with player pianos, cable TV, satellite TV, digital recording media, and Internet radio as well. Traditionally, however, the government has stepped into the fray and “compelled” copyright holders to license their work for a fee. This is called a “compulsory license” (or “compulsory”).”
You are right Malini. I just wonder how it goes in France if their government will be made to make collective licensing an ‘obligation’. How will the companies there react to that? Move their business to other countries? Obey? Interesting stuff, on many levels.
I feel Collective Licensing is the way to curb piracy, and compensate artists and copyright holders.
I found all the information here on collective digital licensing really interesting and informative. While doing a bit of online researching on this subject, I came across an interesting post on the Guardian’s music blog:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2010/jan/28/my-solution-digital-licensing-mess
The author of this blog has also come up with a similar idea: “My proposal would be for collection societies to “audition” to become the one-stop licensing shop for Europe. They’d have to prove to be transparent in their accounting, efficient in both licensing music services and in distributing royalties fairly. And it would have to be a not-for-profit organisation.”
It seems that lots of people have similar ideas on this subject, it’s just a matter of sussing out which would be the best way forward with this.