On Thursday, Reuters reported on a worldwide "Music Matters" survey that was released by Synovate, a research marketing firm.

Not only did the survey confirm that most of us are "passionate about music" (63%, which is not surprising.)  It also noted some positive signs for the future of legal content online:

Music streaming is also a big fan favourite, with one in five people globally, topped by Korea at 60 percent, streaming songs in the past month from legal music streaming services.
 
Robert Alleyne, research manager for Synovate in Britain, said that while illegal downloads and counterfeit CDs still plague the music industry, the stigma attached to these activities had largely succeeded in reducing piracy.
 
"For a long time downloading illegally was easier and faster than downloading legally but not anymore. And consumers have taken to these new legal services," he said.
 
Not only are consumers willing to pay for music, they're also happy to spend cash on getting to know their favourite performers better through attending performances or gaining access to exclusive information or parties, the poll showed.

A strong digital economy will require functioning markets, and the shift towards legal delivery mechanisms like streaming services represents a positive step in the right direction.

As the above survey indicates, people are willing to pay for music.  Reasonable monthly fees, and enormous catalogs of high quality digital music files accessible through simple interfaces are picking up steam, proving that people will pay for reliably delivered, quality content on demand.

It may be that the "rental" model - buying access, rather than ownership - is what consumers will prefer in the digital economy. 

Arts + Labs advisor Andrew Keen talks about the ludicrous comparisons between the fight for Internet freedom and living under actual oppression, such as in China:

Free Press used -- or should I say, abused -- the speech to launch a ridiculous attack on American companies. Explicitly comparing American phone and cable corporations with repressive overseas regimes in Iran and China, Free Press Executive Director Josh Silver conflated the network neutrality debate in the U.S. to the struggle for human rights in the rest of the world.

"Our moral authority as a world leader stems from our vibrant democracy, which is predicated on the openness of civic communication. Network Neutrality means no corporate censorship and no government censorship," Silver said yesterday, echoing the neo-Marxist critique of mainstream media by Free Press co-founder Robert McChesney. "How can we encourage freedom abroad when it has not been defended in our own communications infrastructure? Without badly needed U.S. government action to maintain freedom on the Internet, our great democracy is at risk."

No, this isn't an early April Fool's joke. Silver really did argue that "our great democracy" is at risk because some American cable and telecom companies -- as well as many writers, filmmakers, musicians and other creative artists -- want the option of additional services. Yes, Silver really did conflate the bloody repression of anti-government individuals in Iran and China with the possibility that American access providers could give consumers more choices."

Read the complete article at The Hill

Arts+Labs advisor Andrew Keen comments on the opponents of "TV Everywhere", and explains that they are just writing another chapter in an ever-expanding book of conspiracy theories:

"Some people don't like TV Everywhere, Comcast's and Time Warner's plan to bring cable TV to the Web.  They are just paranoid.

Allow me to explain. In his 1964 Harper's Magazine essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics", Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter argued that American politics has often been a stage for excessively conspiratorial and suspicious minds from both the left and the right. What disturbed Hofstadter most of all was the sanity of the paranoid. "It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that make the phenomenon significant," he explained. By infecting normal people, Hoftstadter worried, the paranoid style had made conspiratorial fantasy a troublingly recurrent feature of American political culture."

Read the entire article at TechCrunch

Arts+Labs, a unique alliance of the technology, content and creative communities, today announced that Andrew Keen, a renowned Internet pioneer and entrepreneur, has joined its coalition - effective immediately.  Keen is best known for his 2007 book, entitled CULT OF THE AMATEUR: How the Internet is killing our culture, an account which has been translated into 16 languages, and explores the interest around user-generated content, peer production, and other Web 2.0-related subject matter.
 
"Andrew's involvement in Arts+Labs is a significant event for our organization," said Mark McKinnon, co-chair of Arts+Labs.  "Andrew is a true thought leader in the industry, a published author and noted speaker and brings a tremendous amount of credibility to the content and network management arena.  This is a big step forward for Arts+Labs towards advancing our vision of a vibrant digital society, and a great way to kick off 2010." 
 
Launched in September 2008, Arts+Labs was formed to create consumer awareness around the availability and vast array of legal, safe, affordable and innovative entertainment content on the Internet,  encourage cross-industry collaborations that support enhanced and intelligent Internet infrastructure, and promote respect and recognition of copyright. Most recently, Arts+Labs has been vocal in upholding their mission by filing comments on the Federal Communication Committee's (FCC) proposed network neutrality rules, hosting a network management event that embraced both sides of the current debate, and testified at a New York City Council hearing against net neutrality and in support of antipiracy.
 
"What attracted me to Arts+Labs was a shared vision of how content companies, network organizations and the creative communities could come together to forge a new dynamic in today's marketplace.  I am looking forward to joining the team and tackling some of the thorniest issues that are on the minds of the regulators, the industry and the public," said Andrew Keen.
 
Aside from Keen's involvement in Arts+Labs, he is working on a second book entitled DIGITAL VERTIGO: Anxiety, Loneliness and Inequality in the Social Media Age. He writes regularly for many publications in America and Europe including The Daily Beast, Forbes, The London Independent, The London Daily Telegraph, Los Angeles Times, Amsterdam Volkskrant and the Directors Guild of America Quarterly, where he has recently published critical essays on Network Neutrality and Intellectual Piracy.  In addition, Keen regularly delivers keynote speeches at conferences worldwide, lectures at universities including UC Berkeley, Vanderbilt, Oxford, York, Warsaw and Amsterdam, and is interviewed frequently on leading television and radio networks such as the BBC, CNN, NPR, NBC, CBS, ABC, Sky and Al-Jazeera.
 

Public Knowledge posts a mystifying assault on the Irish rocker Bono over the issue of music piracy.

Whether or not you admire his music and political views, Bono made a good point when he wrote in the NYTimes that just because technology lets us make perfect digital copies of our favorite songs doesn't mean it's right to steal musician's work without paying for it.

Public Knowledge objects, dismissing online thievery as "trivial."  Although on other days, its founder Gigi Sohn, says pirates "stink; they should be thrown in jail. And I actually ... encourage the content industry to go after people like that."  However, she primarily argues that intellectual property rights hurt people in developing countries.  Sohn even accuses Bono of "undermin[ing] just about everything else he professes to stand for" - causes that he's devoted considerable time and energy to - by advocating for the protection of creative rights.

I'm not sure that Bono's New York Times op-ed, in which he specifically tried to "rally America to defend" creative rights, was really addressed at Africa. I'm also not sure that music piracy is a top priority for the desperately poor people Bono tries to help. That seems like a bit of a diversion from Public Knowledge. 

However, even assuming that this actually is about developing countries in Africa, it's worth noting that economists like Hernando de Soto would disagree with Public Knowledge and argue that "data shows that countries that protect the physical and intellectual property of their people enjoy nearly nine times higher GDP per capita than countries ranking lowest in property rights protections."  It will be more difficult for developing countries to develop without the presumption of property rights.

How those rights are protected is a different question and perhaps a process of discovery.  But on the question of whether they should be protected, Public Knowledge is wrong to treat intellectual property as if it is a public utility.

Rick Carnes, President of the Songwriters Guild of America, responds to Free Press over their reflexive opposition to new business models that allow creators to protect and sell their content.

In an article yesterday in the Washington Post (Monday, January 4, 2010), Free Press and other public advocacy groups called for an anti-trust probe into TV Everywhere.

For those who haven't heard, TV Everywhere is Time Warner's authentication system whereby certain premium content would be available to subscribers. In other words, you can take your home cable subscription online.

Consumers have been waiting a long time for this. Access to premium content whenever and wherever they want it has been a sort of digital Holy Grail.  To date, lack of access to some premium content has routinely been cited as an excuse for the fact that the vast amount of music and movie content is illegally downloaded using P2P services. With the advent of new and exciting services like Hulu, Vevo, and now, TV Everywhere, the chance to view and listen to the very best content legally is here. No more excuses.

That is why the protests by Free Press and others against TV Everywhere are so confounding to a Songwriter like myself. These groups allege "collusion" to "keep video content behind a subscription-based pay wall."

That 'Pay-Wall' always seems to be the problem for these groups. They want it all, they want it now, and they want it for free. But I've never written a free song. Every one cost me something: a couple of years without being able to heat my house; a future hanging by a guitar string; no health insurance; no pension; writer's block; and the occasional broken heart. I always kept coming back for more because I knew that if I put the right words and music together then I could get paid enough to make it all worthwhile.

Without that 'Pay Wall' I can't make enough to afford to keep writing. No one pays for a ticket when there are no 'Pay Walls' keeping them out of the concert. Creators should not have to ask permission to innovate and earn fair compensation by selling our work.

The public advocacy groups are so concerned about anyone becoming a content 'Gatekeeper' (even with their own content!) on the internet that they are willing to limit the freedom of creators in favor of an internet full of gate crashers.

On February 8, 2005 (commenting on the Grokster decision) in an interview for CNet, Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge wrote, "Public Knowledge believes that online content stores that are easy to use, reasonably priced, permit flexible uses and have large catalogs will win consumers' hearts and pocketbooks, and prove once again that technological development is better left to the marketplace."

Five years later, TV Everywhere sounds a lot like an attempt to create that reasonably priced, flexible use, large catalog, content delivery system.

But it isn't free, so now the Public advocacy groups are against it.

Is that 'Pay Wall' the only real problem for these Groups? If not, then they need to stop giving mere lip-service to the idea that Creators need to be compensated and make some concrete, workable proposals about how that compensation system would work for those of us in the real world.

Just saying no to everything, or Everywhere TV, isn't helping to solve the problem.

Everybody demands new business models for the internet until somebody actually tries them....at which point, some groups can't take yes for an answer.  Yes, Free Press and Public Knowledge are back to attacking attempts to find new business models for the internet.

TV Everywhere is a new approach that gives subscribers more access to the content they pay for in more places at no additional charge...and yet still protects and fairly compensates content creators.  So, of course, Free Press and Public Knowledge take a break from talking up "innovation without permission" to let everybody know they don't approve of this innovation and think the government should put a stop to it.

So, they want to replace the alleged "corporate gatekeepers" with "non-profit gatekeepers" who know exactly what content owners should be required to do with their video.

And I do mean "non-profit". Free Press' report, "TV Nowhere" (PDF), recommends an amusingly bad model for the cable industry.

Newspapers have been forced to compete and to give consumers what they want -- access to content, widely available, sometimes under subscription, sometimes free. If a newspaper refuses to make its content available online, or does so only at high rates, another newspaper can gain revenue by making its content available at more reasonable rates or giving it away for free and relying on ad revenue. Most newspapers haven't charged or required subscriptions to their content because they fear being undercut by their competitors.