Plenty of people are worried that the Google/Verizon net neutrality proposal has too many exceptions. The recording industry is worried that it doesn't have enough.
In a letter sent today to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the RIAA and other music trade groups expressed their concern that the riddled-with-gaping-loopholes policy framework nevertheless might put a damper on ISP attempts to find and filter piratical material flowing through the Internet's tubes. Failure to allow for this sort of behavior would lead to an Internet of "chaos."
"The music community we represent believes it is vital that any Internet policy initiative permit and encourage ISPs and other intermediaries to take measures to deter unlawful activity such as copyright infringement and child pornography," says the letter. "We all share the goal of a robust Internet that is highly accessible, secure and safe for individuals and commerce. An Internet predicated on order, rather than chaos, facilitates achievement of this goal."
(The RIAA is fond of this "Internet of chaos" rhetoric.)
"Accordingly, we are deeply interested in the details of your proposal as they may relate to the protection of content and to making sure that the distinction between lawful and unlawful activity has operational meaning."
The major content industries have pushed for this lawful/unlawful distinction every time the FCC has a net neutrality proceeding, and they even pushed to include it in the National Broadband Plan. Yet the "three strikes" proposals that copyright owners have pushed around the globe don't require any sort of ISP monitoring, wiretapping, or non-neutral behavior, and the RIAA's own now-defunct lawsuit campaign about P2P users likewise required no such help from the ISPs.
But that campaign cost so much money and produced so little in the way of results that it was never going to scale welland the cases that went to court could take years to finish. So the MPAA and RIAA have also been pushing a parallel approach for years, one that would allow or perhaps compel ISPs to get involved and make the whole process of stopping copyrighted file transfers faster and easier.
A higher education law passed by Congress a few years back went some way down this road; starting this fall, all schools that take federal funds need to use technological measures to deter on-campus file sharing. Many schools have adopted surveillance gear from companies like Audible Magic for this purpose. The copyright industries would like to preserve this approach as (at the very least) an option that public ISPs might consider, but nondiscrimination rules could prevent any ISP from taking a risk with traffic-blocking. (Wiretapping laws could also prove problematic, but that's a separate issue.)
"The current legal and regulatory regime is not working for Americas creators," warns the recording industry. "Our businesses are being undermined, as are the dreams and careers of songwriters, artists, musicians, studio technicians, and other professionals."
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