Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit - Day 2

It's a little late and I'm still processing everything, so bear with me. Reporting back from the second day of the conference, highlights included a lively rollercoaster of a debate on music sampling in hip-hop and the issues surrounding licensing, copyright, and artist compensation. At the end of the panel discussion, the issue was no closer to being anywhere near resolved in terms of what direction to move in. It's incredibly divisive, but fascinating to hear different sides of the argument. People in the audience really got into it as well. A lot of cheering and booing. Less like a conference, more like a Yankees game.

The keynote conversation between Senator Al Franken (just typing that makes me happy) and Mike Mills from R.E.M. was also enlightening, and proved that there was at least one issue that everyone in the room could agree on: net neutrality and the dangers threatening the openness of the internet. As Michael Bracy talked about yesterday, internet service providers, in the interest of increasing their profit margins, are interested in pursuing deals that would direct their subscribers to certain marketplace sites while denying or restricting access to others. Of course, this doesn't just affect musicians. As Franken said, it has the power to transform a free, open, democratic system into a corporate pay-to-play situation where those that can't compete financially simply aren't allowed in.

This issue also affects free speech, he pointed out (determining what kind of content moves at what speeds across your servers is a short hop away from determining what's allowed on at all). And it threatens innovation. And restricting innovation would adversely affect the nation's economy as a whole. He announced that the FCC would be issuing pro-net neutrality regulations soon that would also require transparency on the part of ISPs.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, who gave the second keynote speech of the day, added that universal broadband access is the major infrastructure challenge of the 21st century thus far. Putting it in a music-industry context, he pointed out that less than 50% of mainstream country music fans in rural areas have internet access at home.

More tomorrow, the final day of the conference.