The Minister Meets The Industry

There was a palpable sense of history in the making, as Minister for Research and Development Sean Sherlock joined the panel on The Future of Music. On the agenda? The long-promised copyright review and the controversial Statutory Instrument to enable copyright owners to compel telecoms to provide information on those engaged in piracy – and a lot more besides. In the audience? Many of the key players in the current debate about illegal downloading and its impact on the music business.

As it turned out, the Minister had come not to make any unprecedented revelations but to seek accommodation between the dissenting parties. Taking his cue from the launch of The Artists’ Charter, he was firm in his view that it is vital to get the various vested interests, including record companies, telecoms, rights organisations and performers, around the negotiating table. Minister Sherlock was quick to declare that he is “open-minded” regarding solutions. “Hopefully, we can be world leaders, or be ahead of the European curve, on this one,” he said.
To begin the process, a discussion document drafted by Professor Eoin O’Dell of TCD is being published. “It is a copyright review consultation paper,” Sherlock explained about the document, “that will give rise to a process which will go out in the public domain shortly, and which seeks to look at every aspect of copyright law and legislation.”
According to the Minister, this should lead to a new engagement between the online community and the music business, with the Government acting as moderator if needs be. In what was an obvious appeal to EMI boss Willie Kavanagh, and his colleagues in IRMA, who have led the fight against piracy through the courts, he said: “What I’d love to see is a position where everybody just calls off the dogs, so to speak, and gets in a room and we start talking to each other.”
The ultimate question up for debate, according to the Minister, is “How you remove the barriers to innovation – but also protect the content? The average music fan has to ask himself or herself, should it all be free or should I pay for it in some way, shape or form?”
Meanwhile, he confirmed to all present that the much heralded Statutory Instrument, which aims to remove ambiguities surrounding the Charleton judgement, will be signed this year. “The wrath of God was visited upon me in relation to this legislation by people within the online community,” he admitted. “I can absolutely assure you – and them – that it is nothing like SOPA. It is a re-statement of that which was already in the Copyrights and Related Acts 2000.” SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is the US anti-piracy bill that was ultimately aborted recently.
The Minister also revealed his love of Billy Bragg and confessed: “I grew up reading Hot Press.”
Meanwhile, Dervilla Mullen of Eircom Music Hub talked about the need for a culture change and emphasised that her company was committed to developing the model where the rights holders are paid for the use of their music. “It is a tough sell,” she said, but Eircom is convinced that it is the way forward. Over the weekend at The Music Show, Eircom signed up a number of Irish artists directly, with a view to making their music available as part of the Music Hub service.
There were other fascinating contributions about the potential ways forward for artists from Shamal Ranasinghe of the artist-to-fan platform Topspin and Paul Barton of Pledge Music, who are pioneers of the self-funding model for bands and artists with recording ambitions.
All in all, it was a fascinating and very worthwhile debate about what remains one of the hottest topics in music. Watch this space.