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Rory Cellan-Jones

BPI v ISPs - who's won on music piracy?

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 23 Jul 08, 23:34 GMT

Just two days ago BskyB signed a deal with Universal to set up an online music service and I asked whether the fast-growing broadband provider would be doing anything in return to crack down on filesharing. Well now I've got my answer. Sky is one of six major ISPs to sign a memorandum of understanding with the music industry to reduce the ilegal swapping of music online.

The deal was brokered by the government and is being unveiled on Thursday morning. Among those companies to have signed up is Carphone Warehouse, whose boss Charles Dunstone sent the music industry away with a flea in its ear a few months back, insisting it wasn't his job to act as an internet policeman.

So victory to the BPI, the music industry trade body which has fought long and hard to get the ISPs to to recognise their duty to cooperate in the campaign against piracy? Err, not quite.

All the ISPs have promised to do is to send letters to those customers identified by the BPI as persistent filesharers. And these letters are described as "Informative", designed to let people know that what they are doing is illegal, but not to threaten them with anything - much like the letters that Virgin Media has been sending to some of its customers. What the BPI wants - and it's been telling anyone that would listen that it had the government's backing on this - is a "three strikes and you're out" policy, which would see customers who ignored repeated warnings disconnected by their broadband providers. I've spoken to two ISPs in the last few hours and both have made it clear that they certainly will not be threatening customers with any such thing.

Now these letters may have an effect on some who receive them, particularly parents who are informed that the teenagers are upstairs sharing their music with the world. Indeed I'm told that a trial shows they work in around 70% of cases. The trouble is that the other 30%, what you might call the hardcore filesharers, will not be deterred. That issue - dealing with the repeat offenders - will now be discussed by the two sides with the media regulator Ofcom.

I've also heard that the business minister Baroness Vadera has spent many hours on the phone to ISP bosses, urging them to sign up to this deal. Whatever the BPI may say about the threat of legislation if the ISPs don't play ball, it's clear the government wants to avoid that at all cost. After all, any kind of voluntary "pact on piracy" sounds a lot better than framing complex laws designed to turn millions of internet users and the companies who supply them into criminals.

Oh, and that story running in one newspaper about the government favouring a £30 tax to download music seems to be wide of the mark. It sounds like the "iPod tax" idea floated by some parts of the music industry - and even they admit that it is now a non-starter.

The BPI has a carrot-and-stick approach in its dealings with the ISPs - you crack down on pirates, and you can have a stake in what is still a pretty lucrative business. So far, the ISPs seem to be grabbing the carrot - while avoiding the stick.

Maggie Shiels

Saving TV advertising the TiVo way

  • Maggie Shiels
  • 23 Jul 08, 09:46 GMT

You gotta hand it to those bods over at TiVo land. First of all they invent a brilliant dvr for recording TV programmes that lets you skip adverts and gives you ultimate viewing power. Well now, they have turned that on its head and have incorporated a feature that lets you buy products you either see on a show or on a commercial all from your couch.

TiVo have partnered up with Amazon for this amazing switcheroo. And of course it gladdens the hearts of all those companies who had been paying out top dollar for TV advertising only to have viewers completely ignore their pitches.

Christian Ronaldo and Ricardo Carvalho(Full disclosure here. I was an early adoptor and evangelist of TiVo when it first came out but on my return to the Valley, have had to swap to another provider to get the British footy.)

Now the 'Product Purchase Feature' will pair up any item that is available from Amazon with a TV show and allow TiVo viewers to simply click and buy.

"By teaming with Amazon.com, TiVo enables viewers to purchase products related to their favourite TV shows or what they've seen in TV ads without leaving their couch," said Evan Young the director of broadband services for TiVo.

"For example, if a guest on the Daily Show or Oprah has a new book, CD, or DVD out, you can purchase it on Amazon.com using your TiVo remote without missing a second of TV, whether the viewer is watching live or recorded."

Whoopee! More people getting into debt buying things they don't need and more profits for everyone else.

Frankly I think it's a sell out. I liked the fact that TiVo kinda thumbed its nose at the advertisers and gave us, the viewer, the power to just enjoy a programme without it being interrupted every 12 minutes or so.

Now it's the worst of all worlds.

Advertisers hounding us every which way and the awful prospect of constantly being pitched at during a show and after. I know we already are with product placement and subliminal advertising and that as we walk around our towns and cities we are bombarded by thousands of advertising messages every day. But this is just another slide on the slippery slope to increased debt and probably crass TV.

Ask yourself what is going to happen to all those great documentaries and period dramas that cost a fortune to make. Does it mean they will only get funding if they incorporate this feature?

Let's be really extreme and imagine as we watch Mary Queen of Scots head to the chopping block, that we are offered the chance to buy DVDs on the history of the British monarchy. Or let's say, during that World Cup clincher between England and Scotland (hey we can all dream!) that you get the amazing opportunity to buy the autobiography of Sir Alex Ferguson or David Beckham's new underpants line.

Yes, you may scoff, but who is to say that that is not what lies down the road.

Don't get me wrong. I understand the basic business model that TV needs to make money to make programmes and that advertisers need eyeballs to sell their products and that the advertising pie is being gobbled up by the internet. What I fear is that erosion of great TV and the ability of great TV producers and directors to take creative chances that might not always pay off.

Heck you can see here in America that advertising is already going where it really shouldn't ought to.

On the front page of this week's New York Times there is a story about how the presenters on a morning news programme in Las Vegas sit with cups of McDonalds iced coffee on their desks. The anchors rarely touch the cups. I think that is meant to convey journalistic integrity or something.

Execs at the station say it's part of a six-month promotion to shore up advertising revenue. One advertising honcho at the company behind the scheme admitted to the NY Times that if the programme did a negative news story about McDonalds that the cups should get whisked away or they wouldn't be very happy and would probably can the promotion.

I lament the all pervasive nature of advertising in our world and especially in our very own living room. And now TiVo, the company that made skipping adverts so easy is delivering viewers back into the hands of advertisers. But then I guess that's what they call progress!

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