Dunedin South MP Clare Curran posed an interesting question on her Red Alert blog last week. The Labour Party communications and IT spokeswoman asked how getting rid of labels and selling music directly to consumers might change the nature of things.
New Zealand's passing of copyright law last week sparked a fresh round of intense debate and scrutiny on how to address the behaviour of a large number of New Zealanders on the internet who were illegally downloading music, movies and other content.
Ms Curran said many people either did not know they were downloading illegally or did not feel they were doing anything wrong.
And for many, it was the easiest way to get access to what they wanted to hear or watch.
The down side was that the creators of that content (the artists) missed out on payment. The traditional distributors of the content, the movie studios and music labels, wielded considerable influence in New Zealand and around the world in convincing governments to pass strict laws to prohibit filesharing.
But they were slow to develop new ways to distribute their content easily and legally to people through the internet, she said.
Ms Curran quoted a piece written by United Kingdom-based open government and open source advocate Glynn Moody that pondered whether Google could buy the music industry.
That would solve licensing problems at a stroke. But anti-trust authorities around the world would definitely have something to say, so Mr Moody suggested a consortium of leading internet companies, such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Baidu and Amazon, jointly buying the whole music industry while promising to licence its content to anyone on a non-discriminatory basis.
"At the very least, the idea ought to send a shiver down the spine of the fat-cats currently running the record labels and encourage them to stop whining so much just in case they make the thought of firing them all too attractive to the people whose lives they are currently making an utter misery," he wrote.
The idea of internet companies buying the music industry makes such good sense, it really is a surprise that Google or Facebook have not made a play for it.
Clips of music videos, sporting moments, and all sorts of other activities, regularly make their way to the public arena through Facebook and YouTube.
Recently, I watched a movie in Auckland on television streamed directly through a computer. The movie had not been released in New Zealand but there we were, watching it on a damp Sunday afternoon.
No-one downloaded the movie, as such. They logged on to the website and streamed it. Downloading was possible but it was such an awful movie, no-one bothered. However, there was not only one version of the movie to watch. Some were as bad as someone sitting in a darkened theatre with a video recorder. Others were reasonably good quality.
The legislation introduced last week carried a "three strikes and you are out" penalty with quite substantial fines for illegal downloading. But, in reality, how many people will that stop? With so many mobile devices available, people will continue to download illegally and then the question must be posed, how illegal is it? Changing a SIM card is as easy as it gets.
Politicians are notoriously out of touch with anyone younger than themselves, and whatever happens in New Zealand will not affect the rest of the world. People running download sites close down and move regularly. Devotees follow them. Maybe having Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others running the music industry is the best solution.
- Twitter: @mackersline
