[FYI] Bronfman fordert neue Internet-Architektur: "Trace every Internet download and tag every file."

["Axel H Horns" <horns@t-online.de>]

[Hier sollte deutlich werden, dass der Umbau der Architektur des 
Internet nicht lokal von GEMA und IFPI z.B. mittels des RPS-Projektes 
betrieben wird; die gesamte Branche trachtet heftig danach, siehe 
Bronfmans untenstehenden Fuenf-Punkte-Plan. Bevor man solche 
Vorstellungen als pure Wunschphantasien abtut, sollte man sich jedoch 
IMHO eindringlich klar machen, dass die Hollywood-Lobby beim U.S.-
Gesetzgeber bisher noch immer das bekommen hat, was sie haben wollte. 
Lary Lessigs diesbezuegliche Warnpredigten stimmen nicht unbedingt 
optimistisch.                                             --AHH]


http://www.currents.net/news/00/05/31/news2.html

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Daily News  

Firm Thinks it Can Solve Music-pirating Problem  

By Sherman Fridman, Newsbytes  

May 31, 2000  

As litigation pitting the recorded music industry against music 
service providers such as Napster and MP3.com continue, an Internet 
start-up, SealedMedia, Inc., believes that it has the answers that 
will allow the transfer of digital content over the Internet while 
preserving the copyright owner's control over access to that content. 
 
In an interview with Newsbytes, Alan Mutter, CEO of SealedMedia, 
Inc., explained that his company is just facilitating what content 
owners and consumers have been doing for a long time: selling and 
buying content. And, Mutter stressed, his company's technologies 
works with any digital audio, video, or print media types, including 
MP3, streaming media, HTML, PDF, JPEG and GIF.  

In an overview of the process, Mutter said that SealedMedia's 
technology enabled content publishers to "seal" their digital content 
and then define licenses for that content.  

The content is separated from the rights or licenses that go with it, 
so that the content can be distributed freely over the Internet. When 
the consumers want to hear or view the content, they must first get a 
license to do so.  

A consumer who wants to access digital content from a producer who 
participates in SealedMedia Inc.'s process, receives an encrypted 
file. Before a consumer can access the content, it must be opened 
with the user's "key." This key, which remains with the user, has 
authentication information and specifies that the consumer has paid 
for a license and the terms of the license, the file's time length 
and whether the content be copied or accessed multiple times.  

Mutter assured that this entire process takes place as quickly as any 
online purchase transaction, and that various payment plans are 
supported. In addition, Mutter says that to view content, a one-time 
download of a small reader file is necessary, and that a user's "key" 
is password-activated.  

Mutter said that the acceptance of SealedMedia's technology by 
content producers has been "awesome," and that the technology was 
developed at "the right place, for the right thing, at the right 
time." What's driving SealedMedia's "staggeringly good" acceptance, 
according to Mutter is that after several years of experimenting, 
content publishers of all types are realizing that selling ads and 
subscriptions don't make money. The boards of directors of these 
companies, Mutter says, have laid down the law: "Make money or else, 
we're tired of giving this (content) away."  

In fact, Mutter says that a lot of corporate executives with whom he 
presently deals don't even have business cards yet, they're so new on 
the job--they've just been hired by companies that sent them packing 
because they were not making money.  

Mutter believes that consumers will pay for content they want, and 
Tuesday's announcement from MP3.com Inc. [NASDAQ:MPPP] would appear 
to support that conclusion.  

MP3.com announced Tuesday that it has formed a new business unit to 
take advantage of the tremendous opportunity for growth that it sees 
in the multi-million dollar retail music licensing market.  

In a prepared statement, MP3.com said that its Retail Music Division 
would be providing Web-enabled, business-to-business music delivery 
to grocery stores, fashion outlets, shopping malls, restaurants and 
other retail establishments.  

According to MP3.com, these establishments would be able to select 
from over 424,000 songs and audio files from more than 67,000 artists 
at the MP3.com site. This music is licensed, and subscribers to the 
service can manage and modify their music selections anytime and 
anywhere utilizing an online private account page.  

"We estimate that retail music licensing exceeds $500 million 
annually and to properly capitalize on this opportunity it was 
imperative to form a distinct business division," MP3.com chairman 
and CEO, Michael Robertson, said in a prepared statement.  

One inducement that MP3.com claims will turn a business expense into 
a "revenue producer" is that subscribers to the Retail Music Service 
will be able to insert their own or merchandiser advertising into 
their music programming.  

For a long time, SealedMedia's Mutter said, companies have considered 
copyright infringement as a "cost of doing businesses." But now, he 
said, with the advent of businesses models which have at their core 
the wholesale giving away of content, publishers are banding together 
to put a stop to the practice.  

The fact that content producers were no longer going to accept 
wholesale copyright infringement appears to be borne out by remarks 
made by Edgar Bronfman Jr., head of a major entertainment 
conglomerate--Seagram Co. Ltd. [NYSE:VO]--on Friday at Real 
Conference 2000. Seagram owns well-known brands in the areas of 
motion pictures, print and recorded music.  

In the text of his remarks obtained by Newsbytes, Bronfman said that 
the most central and critical challenge for the current technological 
revolution is the protection of intellectual property rights.  

"If intellectual property is not protected," Bronfman said, "across 
the board, in every case, with no exceptions and no sophistry about a 
changing world, what will happen? Intellectual property will suffer 
the fate of the buffalo."  

To preserve the intellectual property buffalo, Bronfman vowed to 
"move a Roman legion or two of Wall Street lawyers to litigate in 
Bellevue and San Jose."  

Bronfman outlined five steps, which he said that Universal, Seagram's 
main entertainment brand, would be taking.  

"First," he said, "we are focused on creating and launching a 
consumer-preferred and legal system for consumers to access the media 
they desire, beginning with music." In this regard, Bronfman said 
that a secure downloading format would be launched in a few months. 
Real, Magex and InterTrust Technologies were the companies mentioned 
by Bronfman as Universal's partners in this area.  

Secondly, Bronfman pledged to emphasize that taking recording music 
without paying for it is "stealing." He emphasized that the 
technological revolution exemplified by the Internet cannot be 
allowed to overturn the principles of law, justice and civilization.  

Universal's third initiative is to use the technology that "enables 
crime" to protect against crime and criminals. Bronfman said that the 
technology exists to "trace every Internet download and tag every 
file." He said that he fully intended to "exploit technology to 
protect the property which rightfully belongs to its owners."  

The fourth avenue of attack, according to Bronfman, is to utilize 
existing laws to bring to justice those who "demonstrate contempt for 
law and copyright." In this area, Bronfman noted the lawsuits filed 
against Napster, MP3.com and iCraveTV. "We will take our fight to 
every territory, in every court in every venue, wherever our 
fundamental rights are being assaulted and attacked," he vowed.  

Bronfman's fifth proposal makes a distinction between anonymity and 
privacy. He said that he recognized the right of citizens to privacy, 
but not to anonymity, which he compared to the "digital equivalent of 
putting on a ski mask when you rob a bank."  

Bronfman raised the fight against online piracy to epic World War II 
proportions. "World War II," he said as he asked everyone in the 
audience to join in the fight to protect and defend property rights, 
"was won by the Allied forces, not only because we were right, but 
also because we had more men and women, more weaponry and more 
money."   

Bronfman left no doubt that he equated content producers to the 
Allied forces and "that money in turn would train more men and women 
and build more weaponry" for the fight against online pirates.  

Bronfman did not say what the penalties should be for "all those who 
hold fairness in contempt, who devalue and demean the labor and 
genius of others."  

Bronfman held myMP3.com, Napster, and Gnutella as the ringleaders, 
"the exemplars of theft, of piracy, of the illegal and willful 
appropriation of someone else's property."  

Does all this indicate that the days of free content on the Internet 
over? Yes and no, according to Mutter.  

Mutter believes that there will still be free content available on 
the Web, just not as much of it. Some cuts from an album may be free, 
but the entire album won't be, he says. There will be just enough 
free material to "get your head inside the tent," Mutter said.  

More information about SealedMedia, inc. is available at 
http://www.sealedmedia.com  

The Web site for MP3.com, Inc. is at http://www.mp3.com .  

Seagram Co. LTD maintains its Web site at http://www.seagram.com .  

Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com  

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