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| Is ISPs' concern privacy or a private agenda?
Is ISPs' concern privacy or a private agenda?
Robert Thompson
Financial Post
April 22, 2005
In the battle over free music file sharing, Canada's Internet service providers have become a prickly thorn in the side of the country's largest record labels.
ISPs have cited privacy as the reason for their refusal to disclose the names of their file-sharing customers to music companies for potential prosecution. But industry watchers say the real reason is that music downloads have driven the rapid growth of high-speed Internet connections and profits.
"It doesn't surprise me that the ISPs would oppose a court order about music file sharing," said Iain Grant, a telecommunications consultant with the SeaBoard Group. "Just look at what file sharing has done for them."
For the Internet industry, music file sharing has become the so-called "killer application," bringing in new customers willing to pay for additional bandwidth. All of which has been a financial windfall for Canadian ISPs, Mr. Grant said, especially after they invested hundreds of millions of dollars in new networks to deal with the traffic.
On Tuesday, lawyers for Telus Corp. and Shaw Communications Inc. appeared in court to argue against the appeal of a case that would force them to turn over the names of those who have allegedly freely traded thousands of music files over the Internet.
While the two Western Canadian ISPs battled the music business in court, telecommunications giants Bell Canada and Rogers Communications Inc. sat on the sidelines, content to let their rivals fight the case for them.
When the case against music file sharers was first announced in late 2003, Telus, along with Rogers, and Bell, all said they would respect a court order asking them to turn over the names of customers allegedly trading music on the Internet.
Only Shaw said it would oppose the order, arguing that it would fight to protect the identities of its customers.
Yesterday, Shaw president Peter Bissonnette said his company's position on the matter has been clear from the start.
"Telus were trying to get us not to fight it," said Mr. Bissonnette. "I asked why we would side with Telus and said the privacy of our customers was the issue here."
Mr. Bissonnette said once Shaw made its opposition to the court order publicly known, Telus bowed to competitive pressure and suddenly announced it too would oppose the music industry.
On Tuesday outside of a Toronto court where the music industry' appeal was heard, Jay Thomson, assistant vice-president of broadband policy at Telus, said his company wanted to ensure that the court order be given the appropriate scrutiny.
While Shaw has been consistent in saying it has opposed the music industry to protect the privacy of its customers, Mr. Bissonnette acknowledged that peer-to-peer file sharing has been a boon to the company's Internet network, which it spent $100-million building.
"We have a very big pipe that is great for things like peer-to-peer and BitTorrent (the file sharing service for movies)," said Mr. Bissonette, noting the company doesn't distinguish the legality of files transferred over its network. "People love our network because it is so fast for those things."
Of the ISPs, only Videotron, a division of media giant Quebecor Inc., has sided with the music business.
"We can't stand against satellite signal theft and not have issue with music piracy," said Quebecor counsel Serge Sasseville. "We need to be consistent when it comes to intellectual property."
Regardless of the decision in the file-sharing appeal, the case has caused a rift between the music industry and Canadian ISPs.
The two groups should be working together to support legal music sites, said Graham Henderson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association. Instead, they've spent 18 months in court fighting over the matter.
"The potential of the business, should we work together, is tremendous," he said. |
