In today’s 24-hour news cycle, it’s easy for misinformation to spread, particularly when reporters rely on dispatches from other reporters in writing their own copy. We saw a wildfire like that last week, when officials from the creative and ISP industries spoke at the Leadership Music Digital Summit in Nashville. Numerous — and erroneous — reports of a panel discussion resulted from the event, even though the reporters writing the stories weren’t in attendance. The rumor? I hate even repeating it, but it was falsely suggested that AT&T had adopted an RIAA-sponsored program to kick infringers off of the Internet. That was wrong on many levels.

One reporter who was in attendance was Susan Butler, a veteran musioc-industry reporter who now manages the publication Music Confidential. (I would have been there but I was flying to Seattle for the Federal Trade Commission town hall on DRM.) Ms. Butler, writing in her March 26 issue, was none too pleased with how her panelists were mischaracterized. The panelists were AT&T Senior Exec. VP for External & Legislative Affairs Jim Cicconi, Comcast External Affairs & Public Policy Counsel Joe Waz; and Warner Music Group VP Public Policy for Govt. Relations Linda Bloss-Baum. I know all three — they’re all impressive individuals who don’t make reckless public statements.

CNET, Billboard.biz, ZDNet and Wired.com all got into the feeding frenzy with headlines like “AT&T First to Test Anti-Piracy Plan.” The chain began, apparently, with a single source in the room speaking to a single reporter not in the room. Here’s Ms. Butler’s take:

As the moderator, I feel I have a special responsibility to set the record straight. Therefore, before discussing important substantive information about the ongoing work with ISPs, dispelling false impressions left by inaccurate press reports–later corrected in part–should be addressed.”

A recurring theme, Ms. Butler writes, was that AT&T (and Comcast) were not looking to cut off subscribers.

“The original report was erroneous, and [press reports] kept repeating it,” Ciccone told Music Confidential the day following the panel. “It’s just wrong. We’ve never had any discussions with the RIAA about any sort of off-loading of enforcement responsibility, and we would never agree to do such a thing. In fact, [the RIAA] never broached it with us, either. Whoever the source was for the original report was just not accurate.”

That’s of course why I was always taught as a reporter not to run with a story without two sources, but in this instant-information world, many now take the approach of a casual software company, that you can put the story out in beta and correct glitches later. I don’t agree with that approach but I understand the motivations behind it.

Point of disclaimer — both AT&T and RIAA are members of the Copyright Alliance. I didn’t speak with anyone from either organization prior to writing this blog post. But I am fairly familiar with what various parties are doing in this space, and Ms. Butler is right in noting that people are confusing a “graduated response” approach with the “three-strikes” approach we’ve heard proposed, largely in Europe and Oceania. (Ben Sheffner has a good legal summary of this kerfuffle.)

Graduated response merely means ISPs, when being informed of likely unauthorized file sharing, pass on that complaint to the customer. The customer then has the opportunity to respond, perhaps by demonstrating how the activity may have been authorized. Rightsholders are pretty sure there won’t be many false positives — they only notify on works they know have in no way been authorized to transport on, say, a torrent service — but some opponents of graduated response have said ISP customers may not get the notice, particularly if they’re sent to the email address issued by the ISP, but the customer uses a different account.

There are ways an ISP can communicate. Generally ISP customers have provided a key piece of contact info — an email address, a phone number — that can be used. I’ve heard of experiments with a bar that would appear in your browser notifying you that you have a message from the ISP; the bar doesn’t go away unless you click to read the message, and if you keep getting messages, the bar keeps taking up more of your screen. This would seem to completely moot the issue of someone not receiving notification, but I’m sure some will raise other objections (remember, you can make the bar go away by clicking on the message; that’s not a big hurdle).

So what good are notices if the ISPs are saying they’re not looking to terminate customer accounts? That’s a legitimate question. But note this from Ms. Butler’s report, referring to a trial AT&T did last year with motion pictures:

The trial revealed that the vast majority of subscribers stopped the activity after receiving notices, says Ciccone. With each subsequent notice, another 50% stopped the activity. Only a relative handful of subscribers continued the activity after receiving notices. These results support the conclusion that a notice program can have a very big impact on piracy. These results were consistent with studies in other countries, added Bloss-Baum.

There will always be infringers. In Seattle, I had lunch with some of the anti-DRM speakers. One boasted to me about how active he was in using torrent services to infringe; it was easy, he said, and argued that if technology allows it then it can’t really be wrong. But most of us can be persuaded to play by the rules when it no longer seems to be in our interest to break them. The effect of these letters show that.

This is a win-win-win. ISPs gain access to more bandwidth. The creators behind those works see infringement drop. Consumers continue to see creative works produced and enjoy more Internet bandwidth.

Ultimately, ISPs should be free to do whatever they need to do to reduce illegal behavior on their private property. But these first steps — taken on their own initiative, and not as some kind of cave-in to rightsholders — are not anything to create hysteria over. They are something that deserves accurate reporting.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 2:58 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under internet, network neutrality, piracy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.