French President Nicolas Sarkozy today announced the formation of a new Anti-Piracy body, designed to combat the illegal sharing of media content on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks in the country. This isn’t a surprise; the French government has been brokering a deal with the country’s media companies over the past months with the aim of tackling what they call ‘casual piracy’, and reducing the number of illegal transfers and downloads of music and videos.
P2P networks have often been lambasted by the world’s big media companies as being detrimental to the health of the music industry, due to the fact that users are able to share songs easily by using free, downloadable applications such as Limewire or Kazaa. Firms like Sony and Naxos have long protested against the supposed lack of control over such internet activity, but for so long (at least in the UK) media usage and copyright laws have been deemed sufficient to regulate file sharing to an acceptable level.
However, the US Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) published a report in August this year which details results of a study conducted to investigate the impact of illegal P2P activity in America. The results were startling – according to the report, the country’s economy lost out on a cool $12.5 billion in 2006 alone. That’s half a million dollars more than the entire US media industry’s earnings per annum, and the media companies themselves suffered a loss of $2.7 billion. In fact, the job cutting associated with such a downturn in revenue across the country runs to a total of over 71,000 positions, and over 26,000 of those were in recording and production.
Understandably, the big boys of the media world aren’t happy, and have been pushing the governments of the most problematic countries to try and bring about a drastic change in the way that the law (and broadcasting companies’ policies) regulates digital media and broadcasting. And its not just confined to filesharing; webpage browsing, video streaming – even the way we receive our broadband internet connections – our media rights are under serious threat.
Several cable companies in the US are now developing geographical borders which they can apply to the internet , by regulating where certain data is allowed to be transmitted across the web. For example, if you live in California, CBS may decide that they’ll only allow you to stream certain shows or recordings. Similarly, cable television users who also have their internet provided by the same company may find that they are unable to record or download certain content, based on their location – even using their DVD or HDD recorder. They might have exactly the same programme schedule as another user watching from Nebraska, but by stealthily releasing software updates with media restriction policies included, the right to free home recording and viewing is silently being snatched away from the consumer.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom; many broadcasters in Europe – and a certain number in the US – have been jumping onto the virtual bandwagon by making as many shows available to their viewers online as possible. With the exception of public service broadcasters, many companies are realising that revenues from advertising can potentially be as high online as they can on TV, and some broadcasters are now also generating extra revenue by selling cheaply downloadable content through sites like iTunes or Amazon.
Despite this, times are changing rapidly, and what has become the general trend in the US is now (inevitably) spreading into Europe and Asia. The control of media on the internet is changing dramatically, following the explosion of broadband usage across the developed world over the last few years. Instead of being a medium for the sharing of data and files, the internet is increasingly becoming our one-stop shop for entertainment. And this gives media companies increasing power over what we can access.
If there’s one thing that will always dominate the media industry, it’s the power it has to shape our daily lives; the way we think and how we act. Whether we’re watching TV, surfing the net, or downloading music – we’re going to have to be increasingly careful in preserving the rights that we hold as internet users, to make sure that it remains how it was intended to be –
- free.
Author: Tom Loze-Thwaite
SCIENCE EDITOR
