The above title would be a good name for a CES panel; instead I attended one today titled "Copyright vs. Consumers." Not the friendliest of titles, but as one panelist said to me before the event, "this is CES." Fortunately Jeff Blattner of XM Satellite Radio said "the notion of copyright versus consumers is a bad one."

Steven Marks of RIAA was the only pro-IP panelist, and not surprisingly he found himself under some fire, but he handled himself well and the panel was well-moderated by my former colleague Paul Gluckman of Consumer Electronics Daily. Much of the discussion was a rehash of debates that have been held in DC, including at PFF congressional seminars, but some provocative statements were made by Gerd Leonhard, author of Future of Music.

Leonhard kicked things off by saying 2007 would be the year that DRM dies. That might be a bit of an exaggeration; after all, I heard on another panel all sorts of examples of rights management approaches that have been embraced by consumers, starting with cable conditional access. But perhaps of more interest was why he thought DRM would go away; because the labels would decide to give up control of content in order to make more money.

Could it really be so simple? Leonhard said music should be sold like cable TV or wireless phone service, where people pay a flat rate for unlimited consumption. This isn't free, but it "feels like free." In his book, he says music should be sold like water. But we've heard this music-as-utility before; EFF has proposed an ISP tax that would allow people to download unlimited content from P2P services, and France explored a similar licensing approach.

The first question I always ask when I hear this model is, "How do artists get paid?" When I asked today, Leonhard and others said there are technologies that can track downloads and route payments. Of course, many questions remain unanswered. For example, if I pay $5 per month and I download 500 songs in one month, is one penny then sent to the owners of each song? How is that divided among labels, artists and songwriters? If I download one song, do these parties split $5?

But there's a bigger question -- without DRM, where's the incentive to continue to pay? If you mandate it through an ISP or government tax, then my mother-in-law who downloads no music subsidizes a college student downloading huge volumes of songs. If it's a voluntary system, then wouldn't I sign up, pay my $5 monthly fee, download 300,000 songs, and then cancel? That would last me awhile. With my Napster to Go subscription, when I stop paying my $15 per month, my songs go away; it's DRM that allows that to happen.

Music licensing is a mess. People want access to music and they want to use it in different ways. Lots of vendors here are seeking to accommodate those consumers. I welcome Leonhard and others who are thinking of ways that we can make sure copyright isn't viewed as an obstacle for consumers. But we must always ask how these reforms affect artists, because we want them to continue to have incentives to create.

posted by Patrick Ross @ 7:48 PM | DRM & Watermarks, etc.

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