| How will your initiatives be
helped or hurt now that ISPs are moving towards charging
consumers by consumption? |
| Mobile
networks are already doing that, which is why we have been
focused on MMS multimedia messaging as a starting point
to correct the undermining of our copyright systems.
ISPs could always find safe harbor within the DMCA with
the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil"
approach, however this did much damage to the integrity of
our copyright systems. If ISPs switch to charging by
consumption they can no longer say they don't know what
end users are doing and this will go a LONG ways towards
correcting things for rights holders and consumers in a
fair way. We say "yes" to charging by
consumption which is also known as "metered
usage." |
| |
| Why are you helping Luvdarts
LLC in their copyright infringement accusations against
Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile? |
| Luvdarts LLC
is a governing member of DataRevenue.Org and we have a
vested interest in seeing that they get the attentions of
the wireless carriers because what they are saying is
correct. MMS and other content created by others
have been making money for the Telcos for a long time
without the creators getting a slice of the pie.
Telcos are mainly wanting to entice users to engage their
services one way or another. If they can do that by
using others content to achieve that then so be it has
been their attitude. Never mind the fact that they
don't pay for that while all the time charging for access
to that information. Copyright infringement takes
place when you do provable things without the copyright holders
permissions. Luvdarts LLC has been producing and
publishing MMS content for years without any payments or
accountability from the Telcos. Meanwhile, that MMS
has generated MMS data revenue for the wireless
carriers. Would there be ANY MMS data revenue
generated without MMS content? MMS content is mainly
user generated content or in the case of Luvdarts LLC,
professional content that is clearly marked as such.
In either case, the copyrights which include the right to
profit from distribution and publication are NOT held by
the wireless carriers. Yet they are definitely
profiting from these transactions. This is another
case where there needs to be systems developed to cover
these things in a fair way going forward. The
Luvdarts LLC action should bring this to light and that is
why we will help.
|
| |
| How far along are you in the
process? |
| Well
assuming you are asking about the proposed legislation
process we have already solicited the highest levels of U.S.
government regarding our initiatives. The Obama
administration's ambitions for health care and other high
priority initiatives make this a good time for us to
galvanize multimedia factions and stake holders to prepare for the
sponsorship and introduction of a new bill within the next 6
- 8 months. This means our current highest priority is
in seating a balance of governing multimedia players and
stakeholders that
will help us refine and see this legislation through.
This grouping of multimedia players and stakeholders will be setting the
standards for generations to come. |
| |
| This is more of a comment
than a question but what makes you so sure the wireless
industry will allow this? |
| On the
surface it would appear the wireless industry may not like
this but we believe worse come to worse all they would have
to do is pass this cost on to the consumer. Keeping in mind
that when a consumer shares via their mobile they have to
know they are being charged and the receiver is too one way
or another. So this brings back the concept of true
popularity doesn't it? If they don't like it enough
to pay
to share it, then they won't share it. This is a fair way to do
business. It is actually a win win situation.
If they do share it p2p that will greatly increase a carrier's ARPU
while providing consumers a legal way to share and rights
holders get a new revenue stream..
Having said that, anyone with a vested interest in
multimedia content is being called to action to help us get
this done. There WILL be resistance. Ultimately, the
wireless carriers will welcome the opportunity to do the
right thing in compensating rights holders. But more
importantly, they will be off the hook for copyright
infringement aggressions and administrating to each and
every rights organization by backing our initiatives to
consolidate these matters. |
| |
| While it does make sense that
music and videos sent from one mobile phone to another may
be considered 'a delivery or publication of copyrighted materials', I
don't see how a newspaper can benefit from your proposed
legislation changes. Am I missing something here? |
| It is good
to see that your perspective on the 'delivery or publication of copyrighted
materials' is on point. A newspaper contains
copyrighted materials protected by U.S. laws just like a
sound recording or video. However, until recently,
newspapers were not able to participate in potential mms data
revenue because printed materials able to go mobile2mobile
were very limited and considered sms or text messages.
Now we have the more progressive newspapers converting
stories into multimedia and delivering them to mobile
devices just like a paper at your door. That would
qualify them to participate in the potential mms data revenue
sharing because as their content is shared mobile2mobile
they would be generating data revenue for carriers. If
this catches on it's highly likely that it would generate
more mms data revenue than music and video put together.
Yes, they would all be considered multimedia but, we have
ways of sorting that out. See
http://mmsnewsfeed.com
for more info. |
| |
| We are paid when
mobile phone customers purchase music (e.g. ringtones,
songs) from wireless carriers or other licensed parties.
Is
your concern p2p distribution via mobile phones?
. |
| Yes, that is
our main concern. The first event that you mentioned
is sometimes called "on deck" content. However, as you've
probably noted already that revenue stream is drying up
because the hardware manufacturers are making phones that
allow consumers to put whatever they want on their phones as
content and/or ringtones. Peer2peer multimedia
exchanges are inevitable on
mobile devices. That will be a bigger disaster than Internet
peer2peer exchanges if we don't monetize it now. That's precisely
what our movement is about.....monetizing mobile p2p multimedia
exchanges BEFORE it
happens. |
| |
|
Currently
the phone companies are making plenty of money selling
content to their customers. Why wouldn’t they protect
against p2p? |
| Because they
are investing billions of dollars into data infrastructure
to increase data revenue usage (ARPU). Data revenue has already
reached an average 30% of gross revenue for the wireless
industry. Their approximate U.S. gross in 2008 was 260
billion dollars. 30% of that is around 80 billion. If sms,
(text messaging) was the bulk of that 80 billion leaving
let's say 20 billion for multimedia gross revenue, then a
10% or equal static dollar amount as a statutory rate would
yield 2 billion dollars in data revenue for mobile
multimedia players. And that is only the beginning.
So there is no reasonable way they can stop p2p mms
sharing and make
money from mms at the same time. |
| |
| What I would like to quantify if possible is
what proportion of current MMS involve copyright material.
Clearly a large proportion of it is perfectly legitimate
personal photos. Is it possible to ascertain the copyright
proportion? |
| The
proportion of current MMS copyrighted material in the U.S.
basically is any MMS in fixed form. That means any and
all videos, music and images (multimedia) is copyrighted the
moment it is fixed according to U.S. laws. Even
legitimate personal photos are copyrighted. Now, we're
NOT proposing that the wireless industry should administrate
the particulars. We are proposing they simply collect
a statutory rate on ALL MMS and an authorized 3rd party
collective in turn will
monitor, collect and distribute that revenue to its members
that want to enforce their rights as the copyright holder. |
| |
| What I'm trying to
understand is: if the sender is the owner of the copyright
(e.g. he's sent a photo he took), then there's no reason the
wireless carrier should pay a share to anyone. |
| We are more
concerned with p2p exchanges where the senders are NOT the
owners. To clarify, even though the carrier would collect a
statutory rate on ALL mms exchanged mobile2mobile,
consumer2consumer or any other way that bypasses the
carrier's content servers, it would be in proportion to the
size of the file. So, all the carrier has to
do is total their throughput of mms and put aside that
amount each month, or week or whatever. In turn,
organizations like DataRevenue.Org, (collectives) in theory
authorized to act on behalf of its members would distribute
the data revenue amongst it's members. |
| |
|
I think this is a
really interesting initiative but all is not quite clear
to me yet.
You say that the kind of MMS
that you are hoping to set up this statutory royalty for
('data optimized' multimedia) does not really exist in
any significant way yet, apart from 'on deck' content.
However, presumably there is still plently of MMS
currently being sent 'on deck' that infringes copyright?
Would your statutory rate apply to the existing MMS? If
so, how much of existing MMS would you estimate is
infringing copyright?
|
| Actually,
the on deck content would be exempt under our initiative
because it was not a mobile2mobile, consumer2consumer
delivery/distribution of copyrighted multimedia. Most
likely the on deck content is under the control of the
carriers and content providers, so payment to copyright
holders is probably covered within their agreement.
Basically, we want to insure peer2peer abuse does not
destroy the future of data revenue growth for the multimedia
community the way it did via the Internet. In fact,
under our initiatives quite the opposite will occur via
peer2peer multimedia data exchanges. |
| |
| I'm worried that in
the model you seem to be describing (a) wireless carriers
pay a fixed royalty on all MMS, whether or not the message
involves infringing anyone's copyright and (b) the monies
are only divided between the members of a professional
association. Surely the monies should be given to the
particular rightsholder whose copyright has been infringed? |
|
It should be noted that it's currently up to
songwriters to register their songs with BMI, ASCAP and
SESAC and up to publishers to register with the Harry Fox
Agency, so having a member rights organization is not
unusual in the marketplace. We believe that
if a creator of multimedia is
serious about monetizing their content, then they should
join a professional association that does that. If they are
not or, don't bother to excercise that right then it would
be to the benefit of those that do. |
| |