WASHINGTON -- The future of music, it seems, is right here in the nation's capital.
When about 200 music executives, artists and lawyers gathered at Georgetown University, the topics on the conference agenda were lofty enough: What new business models may emerge? How are other countries handling things? Should unions be involved?
The one common note, however, at the second Future of Music conference was that everyone from record labels to Napster will be lobbying Congress more furiously than ever. Napster wants cheap music to distribute; the recording industry plans to ask for tougher, even draconian copyright laws; civil libertarians want to gut existing ones.
Take the speech by Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) that opened the two-day conference, during which he said he wanted to rewrite the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That's the 1998 law that handed Dmitri Sklyarov an unexpected trip to federal jail and spurred a lawsuit brought by the movie studios against a DVD-copying utility (download).
"I'm very concerned about the DMCA," Boucher said. "There's an increasing number of instances in which unjust results are reached."
Boucher's proposal is taking place against the background noise of digital rights management, copy protection and ever-increasing online piracy.
Music distributors fret that without the widespread use of strong copy protection, piracy will allow digital versions of songs to be pirated as easily as they were in Napster's heyday. To thwart that possibility, some companies are eyeing legal and technical countermeasures, such as new laws and the patent Microsoft won last month for a "digital rights management operating system."
Boucher, who is singing a different tune, told Wired News last July that he had planned to introduce a bill to amend section 1201 of the DMCA by early 2002. Section 1201 says: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
It doesn't require that the person bypassing the scheme do it to infringe someone's copyright. Boucher thinks that Americans should be allowed to circumvent technological protection for research, criticism, or fair-use purposes, such as listening to an encrypted CD on your home and car stereos.
Of course, Boucher is badly outgunned. The Republicans rule the House of Representatives, and while Boucher sits on the right subcommittee, he's only the third-most-senior Democrat. What's more, his Democratic counterparts in the Senate oppose him.
The legislator who is in a position to do something, Rep. Howard Coble (R-North Carolina), believes the DMCA is just fine. The chairman of the intellectual property subcommittee said in an interview last year that the law "is performing the way we hoped," and his aide echoed that point Monday at the conference.
"(There is not) any need at this point to do a DMCA overhaul," said Debra Rose, counsel to the subcommittee. "I think he's on record saying it's a very good bill and it's working as intended."
Rose said of the committee's members: "Their door's very open to concerns. But let me be clear -- their door hasn't been beaten down with concerns over the DMCA."
Peter Jaszi, a law professor at American University and a fellow panelist, predicted: "This may not be the year of passage.... We may be looking at the beginning of a multi-year process."
Jaszi hopes that consumer groups will become involved in the debate over digital copy protection, but fears that it's "not important enough" for them.
Another proposal that's the subject of intense speculation is Sen. Fritz Hollings' (D-South Carolina) Security Systems Standards and Certification Act, which would embed copy-protection controls in nearly all consumer electronic devices and PCs. Disney is the SSSCA's chief backer.
"I think the SSSCA is never going to pass," said Walter McDonough, the general counsel to the Future of Music Coalition. The group's manifesto says that musicians "have had too little voice in the manufacture, distribution and promotion of their music" and warns of distribution and manufacturing "monopolies."
Chris Israel, the deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Commerce, took a carefully noncommittal approach.
"As a government person, you see the extremes on both sides and you know that the rational debate is in the middle," Israel said. He added: "There's no reason to think that the Internet won't have a beneficial impact (on music distributors) as well."
Napster CEO Konrad Hilbers joined the chorus asking for legislation, saying that while he hopes to ink a licensing deal with the five big record labels, he wants a compulsory license just in case.
"The government has the obligation to step in and set standards to benefit competition.... Congress will have little choice but to consider the compulsory licensing of music recording," Hilbers said during an afternoon speech.
Hilbers bragged that "I'm very close to signing agreements with all the major record labels" -- but told an independent musician in the audience that she wouldn't be getting checks from Napster anytime soon.
On Tuesday, the speakers include Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan), the top Democrat on the copyright subcommittee, the chief technology officer of Red Hat and the former head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
