Rhetoric From The Music War Front

Well unfortunately, Kevin didn't get to do more on camera than just look clever, arching a well placed brow at opportune moments such as those below. (If I know the lad though, he's still working that room!)

From the pre-taped special:

• Nikki Hemming, Sharman Networks (Kazaa): "Vision isn't about waiting 'til all the lights go green before you take off."


• Hilary Rosen (on why the recording industry has never taken advantage of P2P file sharing networks): "Well first of all, they've never asked."


• Derek Broes, Altnet: "I think we are the solution to the industry's woes."


• Charlie Daniels: "I have thought for a long time that the record industry had to catch up. We're always behind in technology. We're always behind in technology, and then as far behind as we are, the people who make the laws of the land are even further behind."

From the 90-minute panel sessions/open mike:

• Bill Evans, Boycott-RIAA.com: "One of the things I've found out is across the board, and this really gets into a gray legal area, the radio stations in America are downloading back catalog off the Internet via file sharing programs because they can't get it any other way."


• No quote to go along with this, but David Lawrence's Legal MP3 Downloads blog scours the Web for free and legal music downloads (from sources like Amazon, artist Web sites, etc.). According to his comments on the show, some 2-3,000 tunes are listed.


• John Perry Barlow to Ted Cohen, EMI (on Cohen's response to an RIAA lawsuit defendant's question about why it's legal for her to tape songs from the radio but illegal for her to download them from the Internet): "Ted, are you actually saying that it's not stealing if it's low quality but it is stealing if it's high quality?"


• Michael Weiss, StreamCast (Morpheus): "I think that the recording industry is going after individuals because they lost their lawsuit to Morpheus."


• John Perry Barlow: "It's not a solution to have a system that causes your record collection to die when you sell your stereo and buy a new one. That is essentially what we've got now with Rhapsody, and for that matter with iTunes."


• Sean Ryan, Rhapsody: "One of the interesting things is we've been trying to license a band, mostly up in Marin, called the Grateful Dead, for about a year and a half to two years, and have been unable to ever actually get it successfully licensed."

This was all I took down, but I'd watch Kevin's space for the inside scoop. (There were other familiar faces in the crowd, so more blogged reports may be forthcoming.)