Hands Off the Internet hearts Sonia Arrison, and in her latest column for Tech News World, she asks an intriguing question: “To what extent are supporters of net neutrality also tacitly supporting piracy?” Arrison works through the issue, and arrives at the conclusion that it’s probably “a lot.” She explains:
Perhaps that’s why the music and movie industry associations, in the past at odds with ISPs over obtaining pirate data, have remained fairly silent in the net neutrality debate. It also makes a recent announcement by the “Future of Music Coalition” look rather silly.
On March 22, Jenny Toomey, executive director of the Future of Music Coalition, said, “With Rock the Net, we intend to get thousands of the nation’s musicians, independent labels and music services to become part of the effort to keep a ‘payola’ system from being established on the Internet.
What’s ironic is that by supporting the issue of Net neutrality, these artists may also be supporting the theft of their products online. That would indeed ensure the elimination of payola, but it would also ensure an elimination of artists’ intellectual property.
The irony is that the music industry has no direct stake in the “net neutrality” debate, yet they have hopped aboard this bandwagon without considering the real threats to their own livelihood.
Networks are great, but they can be abused, and those who use more should pay more. Likewise, if you want to move audio or video packets along a network at a guaranteed rate, that costs a bit more, too. If anything, musicians should want their music and music videos to be delivered using state of the art technology. Whatever Dorgan-Snowe would do, it certainly won’t help that.
