EFF: Piracy Not the Problem
wired.com
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EFF: Piracy Not the Problem
by Andrew Rice
2:00 p.m. 8.Sep.99.PDT
LOS ANGELES -- Piracy is the red herring
of the digital music distribution debate
and the music industry is fishing for
trouble with SDMI, the head of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation told music
industry executives on Wednesday.
"I get the sense that wrong questions are
being asked," EFF executive director Tara
Lemmey said in a keynote address to the
Digital Distribution and the Music Industry
'99 conference.
"How do we lock these rights up? I think
the real question is how do we ease the
function of payment. People don't
normally steal things that are easy to pay
for. Combating piracy means making it
easier for people to pay."
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By locking up Internet music distribution,
said Lemmey, "We're setting up a society
of distrust.
"SDMI [for Secured Digital Music
Initiative] is a vicious lockdown. The more
you lock things down, the more you
encourage people to steal. The
technology assumes you're going to steal
something. That's not how we normally
work."
Consumers, she predicted, would lash
back against restrictive models. "There's
nothing like an oppression to set up a
good rebellion."
Over the break, Jeremy Silver, the vice
president of New Media at EMI, disagreed
with Lemmey's position.
"I'm not sure they really know what SDMI
is," said Silver. "It's unfortunate. SDMI's
aspiration is to create open standards to
let people lay whatever they want on
whatever they want. That's all."
Lemmey's philosophy that companies
should allow unfettered access as a way
of encouraging honesty, said Silver, is
na‹ve.
"That's like arguing that it makes more
sense to not give people car keys
because most people are honest."
Indie record label owner and general
manager Jeff Price of SpinART records, a
New York-based label releasing music by
such artists as ex-Pixies guitarist Frank
Black, violently disagreed.
"My reaction to this is that the SDMI is
full of shit," he said.
Price said the Net has leveled the
recording industry playing field, giving
indie labels like his the opportunity to
compete with big guns like Sony. The big
five record companies, he says, are
scared.
"What they're trying to do with SDMI is
control the direct threat to their
business. If I don't need to go to them
it's a threat, we've cut them off at the
knees. So they created a problem --
pirating -- that needs a solution: SDMI."
"I'm a record company owner and I don't
think pirating is a threat. I actually think
pirating has increased my sales." |
