The new digital canon must take into account streaming, the most effective alternative to P2P

We are about to release the year 2017 and we are still talking about controversies of the last decade. Yes, the digital canon prepares to return, although at the moment we only have many questions for the very few answers that have answered the first information about the negotiations.

Among the questions that have aroused the first information is how will affect this canon to the business of streaming. And is that while there are studies that point to that Spotify and Netflix are being very effective in the fight against P2P downloads, this new standard could be a step back by penalizing also users who opt for these legal services.

And why are they going to penalize them? Well because as we have known, in the negotiations of the new canon is talking about including the mobile devices in it. And this seems to be done indiscriminately , whether we are going to fill it with series and music downloaded by P2P or if we are only going to take advantage of the offline modes of perfectly legal streaming services.

“We can not go back to exactly what we had. Let’s analyze reality, because there are digital copies, licenses, cloud storage and a lot of elements that are developing. Joint reflection “. This was the statement with which Fernando Benzo, the new Secretary of State for Culture, gave a glimpse a few days ago in an interview the possible return of the digital canon.

It is a statement that does not make things clear, and shows that the Government is still far from knowing how the industry is moving and how it can implant in it its desired digital canon without end up lying again for justice. As we have said this morning , the project of the new canon still has several months of negotiations ahead , so we will have to see to what extent the final text reflects the reality of streaming.

Streaming works, the pursuit of P2P does not

This summer, a study commissioned by the UK’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) revealed eye-catching details. According to their research, the number of users accessing content such as music or movies through downloads has continued to fall to register the lowest figure in the last five years.

In parallel, the number of users who exclusively used legal alternatives has also continued to rise, a trend that is expected to continue to grow as more and more alternatives to streaming access to this content become increasingly entrenched. And is that in recent weeks we have been watching as Spotify and Apple Music do not stop growing , a growth driven by the competition, which is also provoking aggressive pricing strategies.

And it’s not just about music. We had an impressive last month of 2016 in which Netflix is ​​showing itself stronger than ever, but in which also have come important competitors with different philosophies, models and prices like HBO and Amazon Prime Video.

On the other hand we have the world of fines and the persecution of users and P2P portals. The audiovisual industry is making a huge effort to close the most popular content exchange pages, but is finding that every time it closes the one that leads the other sector ends up taking its place, making this a game of closures and openings without No practical effect on the actual downloads.

The digital canon will have to take this into account

More and more we do not have any downloaded songs or series of P2P, something that is due to the advance of the industry with the offline modes of Spotify and Netflix. Even so, the new fee seems to presuppose that we will also make downloads and will also charge the compensation to the artists we hear paying perfectly legal services.

Therefore, we are not talking about the future, but a reality that is possibly even more present when the new Canon Digital is finally approved. Streaming is being the most effective method against P2P downloads, so harming it can only lead to the fee being paid to the artists while it harms their interests , or at least those of the users who are willing to pay for the music they They listen as they have always been asked.