The UK music industry and ISPs don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, it’s fair to say, but despite their well-publicised disagreements over the battle against illegal file-sharing, both sides are wary of upcoming legislation from the UK government in this area.”Any intervention must be designed to embrace new horizons, and must be fit and proper to use in a modern society and a modern culture,” said UK Music CEO Feargal Sharkey yesterday, in a MidemNet session focusing on music and the ISPs.”Regulation brings a cost to all parties. We need to be sensitive that the debt to be paid for an imposed government solution does not outweigh the benefits.”Meanwhile, in the same session, Nicholas Lansan, secretary general of the UK’s Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) reflected those concerns, albeit from his members’ standpoint.”Laws rarely prevent what they forbid. If we really want to capture the hearts and minds across Europe, is imposing legislation on our customers really the answer?” he said, before suggesting that such legislation may push P2P underground while alienating consumers.”Both sides are anxiously awaiting the publication later this month of the UK government’s interim Digital Britain report, which will set out its plans – last week, it published the responses to its consultation for the report, which showed little agreement between ISPs and the music industry over the best way forward.In the same session at MidemNet, Kenth Muldin from Swedish collecting society STIM said that his organisation is conducting a survey to find out if a model of licensing file-sharing legitimately is workable, while self-styled ‘media futurist’ Gerd Leonhard outlined his ideas for a new collective licence for online music.For (almost) the full story as it happened, read our liveblog.
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Tools: Kaiber
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