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p2pnet news view Music | P2P | Politics:- “In all the coverage of Lord Mandelson’s sudden support for a ‘three strikes’ policy to tackle unauthorised file sharing, few people are asking the key questions: how will kicking file sharers off the internet based on accusations (not convictions) of multiple attempts to share unauthorised content actually help the entertainment industry make money? How will it actually make anyone buy anything more from the industry?”

Excellent questions, and asking them is TechDirt’s Mike Masnick (right) in Britain’s Telegraph.

They’re particularly apt given the renewed emphasis on ACTA, the entertainment industry’s Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

Referring to it, “ISPs around the world may be forced to snoop on their subscribers and cut them off if they are found to have shared copyright-protected music on the Internet, under an international agreement being promoted by the U.S.,” says the IDG News Service.

“Promoted by America, Yes,” says p2pnet, “but on behalf of the entertainment industry,” going on, “the Three Strikes and you’re Off The Net ‘initiative’ touted around the world as individual government plans is nothing but a part of a carefully orchestrated campaign to turn governments into copyright agencies  funded by local taxpayers, and ISPs into  copyright police, acting against their own customs.”

In Britain, secretary of state for business Mandelson is fronting the scheme and the “implicit assumption” seems to be, “if people are scared of the punishment, not only will they stop file sharing, they’ll suddenly go back to buying,” says Masnick, continuing »»»

Unfortunately, there’s no evidence to support this. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary.

In the US, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) threatened around 18,000 people, not with disconnection from the internet but with huge, potentially multi-million dollar, fines. That’s surely worse than losing your internet connection but rather than scaring people back into buying music, it acted as advertising for file sharing. More people than ever started file sharing and fewer people decided to buy music directly.

Scaring people about the trouble they might get into through file sharing has done nothing to get people to buy more. The ‘stick’ approach doesn’t work.

Instead, what seems to work is the ‘carrot’ approach: giving music fans a real reason to buy. Many musical acts have figured this out – finding ways to better connect with their fans and providing different options for fans to buy their work.

Declaring war on fans who want to share some music they like with others doesn’t better connect musicians with fans. Kicking fans off the internet doesn’t give them a reason to buy. The industry wants to punish music fans for what the technology lets them do, rather than adjusting their business model.

“While many smart artists — big, medium and small — have figured out ways to adjust and give fans what they want, record labels themselves still don’t seem to have understood,” says Masnick, adding:

“Instead they want government and ISPs to punish fans, hoping that this will somehow, magically, get people to buy products they’ve shown no interest in buying for quite some time.”

Stay tuned.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Telegraph – Stop punishing fans and start selling to them, November 4, 2009
renewed emphasis – Three strikes world-wide, and a global DMCA, November 4, 2009
IDG News Service – Trade Talks Hone in on Internet Abuse and ISP Liability, November 3, 2009
p2pnet – Three strikes world-wide, and a global DMCA, November 4, 2009

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