Paul McGuinness continued:
In a change from his Midem speech, he says that ISP monitoring would not be an intrusion on our privacy. Apparently, emails and other internet usage would not be policed or “spied” upon. I don’t understand how we can ask the ISP’s to spy on people who download pirated music/movies/content, but expect the rest of our privacy to be respected. Where do we draw the line?
McGuinness doesn’t offer us any solutions to this. He expects the ISP’s to come up with a solution themselves.
China comes up repeatedly in Paul’s speech. He points at the usual suspects: Baidu, China Mobile, and Yahoo China, questioning the massive profits that these institutions are making relative to the paltry payouts that they make to license holders. However, there is a music industry in China and it is emerging without CD sales to prop it up. Is there really a huge difference between the old fat cats (record label execs, managers, etc…) and the new fat cats (ISP execs, new media companies, etc…). Is this an old fat cat bemoaning the fact that he is losing ground to the new fat cats?
According to Paul, artists are dying out and there is nothing new to listen to. Here I fundamentally disagree. There has never been more new music of such amazing quality than there is today. Where is Paul looking?
—Archie Hamilton, Split Works’ Managing Director
Blogging live from the Music Matters Asia conference