In all of the discussion here, and throughout the entire day, it was easy to forget that the point of higher rates wasn’t necessarily to penalize broadcasters, but to benefit artists. And this is a noble goal. But musician Mike Holden got a chance at the end to express the disconnect between fees that benefit artists but destroy the outlets for their music.
“The questions I ask myself when I look at the new rates is, will as many people be hearing my music? And I think the answer is a definite no. Pandora shutting down alone would take me very close to zero people playing my music. And I ask myself – will the revenue that allows me to record my music go up or down? And if no one is playing my music, the answer is definitely down… I think if businesses like Pandora or live365 are going to shut down because of new rates, then we have a serious problem.”
Panel Two - The Net Effect
Of course, the debate goes far beyond broadcasting. The idea of Network Neutrality, or Net Neutrality, offers a whole new issue for the potential of music on the web – being able to hear it at all.
The basic issue is this: ISPs have control over the bandwidth that users receive. Proponents of Net Neutrality want it to be legislated that ISPs cannot discriminate the resources given to one site over another. The ISPs and those that represent them feel that strictures on their ability to operate constitutes infringement on their rights as a business, and that these restrictions discriminate against them and their ability to compete.
The discussion was heated, though hard to determine the point being made. It devolved fairly quickly into a tennis match of sound bites between Scott Cleland, who is the president of netcompetiton.org, a site that supports the business rights of ISPs, and Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a group that supports Net Neutrality.
The writers and musicians who also sat on the panel had a chance to speak at the beginning. The basic message on their part was this - there has never been a time when artists of whatever variety have had more access to more people quite so easily. Duncan Black, writer of the blog Eschaton spoke of it this way:
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
super job Claire, thanks so much!
2 - bliffle
Why struggle to enforce old monopolistic business models? Let them die, and then form new business models.
The whole concept of copyrights has been so abused that it no longer serves a useful purpose.