"It's our hope that those commercial
relationships will help us remove infringing material that
someone uploaded and we're not being compensated for," Ryan
said during a panel discussion about online entertainment.
Ryan said EMI is interested in protecting video produced by
the label, or video produced by someone else but which
infringes on its intellectual property--for example, someone
lip-syncing a protected song or who has remixed a music
video clip. One solution to the problem is digital tracking
technology.
Reminiscent of the early days of Napster, record labels and
music studios face new piracy challenges as video
consumption explodes on the Internet and through digital
devices such as Apple Computer's iPod. Many companies like
EMI are trying to promote download sales of music videos,
subscriptions and advertising-supported streaming of
trailers, music videos and other promotional material.
But those goals can be diametrically opposed to emerging
trends within sites like YouTube and Revver--which have
thousands of young people uploading their own versions of
videos for distribution, or are redistributing copies of
their favorite music video without the permission of rights
holders.
As part of its policy, YouTube prohibits anyone except
legitimate rights holders, such as EMI, from uploading
copyright content to its site. Despite that, such content
does get posted illegally. As a result, Ryan said, a
fingerprinting technology could be used to automate the
process for detecting illegally uploaded material. Such
marking technology has long been used to track illegally
distributed MP3s in peer-to-peer networks.
Ryan pointed to fingerprinting technologies, designed to
automatically identify and block transmission of
digital-video files, such as those from Audible Magic or
Snocap as possibilities.
However, there is a line between what could and could not be
seen as infringement, according to Ryan. For example, a
user-generated video of a fan lip-syncing a popular song may
be viewed as harmless, or even helpful for promoting the
band, among rights holders. But depending on the band, song
and the nature of the video (if say, it contains racy
material), the uploaded video might be taken down if the
record label has its way.
Still, EMI is trying to take a progressive approach when it
comes to video online, and not necessarily trying to stop
the organic promotion of artists like Coldplay on sites and
personal pages around the Web. Rather, the label is just
concerned with protecting its own revenue stream, Ryan said.
To this end, EMI has struck deals with companies like Rhythm
Media to stream music videos to mobile phones, with
advertisements that appear before the video. It shares
revenue on the ads, and Ryan said those test runs have been
successful with viewers.
In recent weeks, it also teamed with a new service called
Qtrax, an advertising-supported peer-to-peer network, which
is slated to launch later this year. EMI will make its music
catalog available on the peer-to-peer service in a bold move
to embrace technology it once sought to disable for piracy.
With all such services, "our goal is to up-sell them," Ryan
said. "This is a learning experience for us."
YouTube representatives were not immediately available for
comment.
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