9:00 AM
This morning's tag team is Fisher and Nesson. Both outline their vision of the future -- and work toward a discussion from conference participants (read more). Fisher's government regulated scheme reminds me of a cross between the National Works Program under the FDR administration, and European models of subsidy of the arts. Will never happen hear -- smacks of big government, assumes efficient government, and the industry will never hear of it.
Nesson outlines a "First-in-line auto-competition" model. A "denial of service" attack engine that identifies offenders and "slams" them until they take the offending piece down.
Fisher - thinks Nesson's model would "lead to a culture war that makes the drug war look like a skirmish."
Winer thinks the spoof of Madonna asking "what the F do you think you are doing") says that is the perfect reason why we should do none of the above. Let the system be allowed to evolve -- current system may be a dinosaur -- preserving the system may be holding back art.
Nesson says Winer may be right -- perhaps we are in this situation because the industry has decided that ANY use of P2P is threatening and therefore must be destroyed.
A participant wonders if this is beginning of the end of corporate control of the entertainer (did somebody just dial us back to the 60's?)
Nesson says there is a culture of bands free of corporate control existing in the same system as the corporate. The death of the corporate system is probably exagerrated.
Q- Perhaps Nesson's regime unlocks competition. Problem with P2P now is that there is no price enforcement mechanism. Nesson's regime scales - wherase Fisher's does not.
Q - number of artists want to cut labels out entirely. You can see younger musicians using the net and pro tools to distribute their own. Grateful Dead promoted tape trading for years and were one of the most profitable bands in 20th century although they did not have any siginifican top 20 hits.
Q - Nesson model empowers people to engage in DOAS attacks? How do we tell good mobsters from bad mobsters and how do you prevent counterattacks? How is this different from Berman bill?
Nesson - Berman introduced legislation to give green light to any action taken by artist/industry to put an offending machine out of business. This model may not damage a machine but will slow down the machine and slow down access of others to that machine.
Fisher - hazard that Fair Use doctrine could be construed to make lawful activities that Nesson's machine may see as illega therefore creating a questionable use or a hazard of "illegitimacy" of the Nesson model.
Nesson: What is legitimate act of placing copyrighted material in public folder.
Fisher - your act downloading songs to demonstrate your point, as an academic song, is an act that questions (hmm... I lost their argument foundation somewhere)
Fisher points out that appellate courts have been quiety dialing back the copyright application in favor of the intermediaries (ie the labels) in decisions such as Aimster and Napster.
Yocham - music wasn't born of the phonograph - Recording industry was. Nesson's goal is to achieve political acceptability by preserving current model. Why is it not the case that current model be allowed to go their own way (to demise) Why preserve the system
Nesson - so you favor eliminating copyright all together?
Yocham - no, it works with relationship to largescale organizations like networks, firms with promotional materials. Copyright forms basis of legitimate competition. iTunes can price at more than free because it offers value other than access to music.
Fisher - you are right that awareness of political reality drives aspiration to create plan that would be acceptable. But the alternative is TIVO ization or digital lockdown. Despite small size, Hollywood and music industry will persuade Congress to help them lock down the content -- and would be catastrophic for Internet and e2e system in general.
Hope for alternative compensation system is that initially revenues for record companies would be enhanced. Side affect is to encourage artists to make work freely available for public because they get paid from the fund and the more people see/hear their works the greater the competition.
10:33:15 AM 
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