Other Notes From the Dept. of Piracy Crackdown

Posted by Eriq Gardner

• Remember music publishers? The music industry's invisible behemoth that is weathering the piracy storm thanks to lucrative licensing deals? Well, according to a new report by Research and Markets, enforcing regulations against file sharing is "futile." More worrisome perhaps are "artists who are becoming more reluctant to commit to a contract which relinquishes control of their intellectual property."

• We've covered the music industry's best hope for piracy eradication: Internet service providers like AT&T. In an interview with file-sharing news site Slyck, AT&T Senior Executive Vice President-External and Legislative Affairs James Cicconi says the company sees its crackdown on file-sharing services as motivated by financial, not legal concerns. "We’re not taking on a legal enforcement role," says Cicconi. "Simply saying there’s no legal responsibility doesn’t mean we have no responsibility. We also have responsibility to our customers. [A lot] of pirated material is used to transfer viruses, malware, and things of that nature...“[Unauthorized content] raises the cost for our customers. We have a very a small percentage using a majority of the bandwidth. The volume of illegal content is a factor of cost.”

• Now the P2Ps are threatening to sue each other. Wayne Rosso, the founder of the P2P startup Mashboxx, believes his company holds the patent to combining file sharing with contextual ads, and is threatening to sue Limewire.