Via Glyn Moody, we get this bizarre story, which demonstrates how some “new media” execs at the major labels don’t seem to understand “new media.” A few weeks back, Michael Robertson had revealed the ridiculous demands that the major labels were making on anyone who wanted to license content for a cloud music player. Most of the demands made absolutely no sense and represented an ignorance of the technology involved. Remember, these services are about people uploading music they already have so that they can listen to it elsewhere. It’s not about sharing music at all. Yet the labels, in their ultimate paranoia, continue to insist it is. Wayne Borean posted a link to Robertson’s story on the astroturfing “Balanced Copyright” page, that is a front for the major record labels. Jeff Thistle, who is the “Director of New Media” for EMI Canada responded (also mirrored here), saying that these demands were “all reasonable.” When Borean challenged him on this, Thistle replied:

What measures do you propose be put in place to prevent the uploading of major label owned content? I can’t speak to the mechanism to determine what an annual fee would be (presumably it would be by percentage of catalogue * number of lockers that the content resides in), but asking that controls be put in place to prevent the service from becoming another illegal sharing vehicle is *very* reasonable.

How does that make any sense at all? Why should anyone, who has a legal and authorized copy of major label content, be prevented from storing it online to listen to it remotely? And most of these digital lockers don’t allow downloads and are only for the one user who uploaded their own music. The claim that these will become “another illegal sharing vehicle” is a total red herring. So they make up a red herring and pretend they’re doing this to “protect” that which doesn’t need protecting… when the reality is that they’re just trying to force people to pay over and over and over again for music they already paid for.

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