Fergus Cassidy

Summit up

IF you turn seventy this coming year, you're in for a treat. I'm guessing that you might remember some of the hit music of 1953.

Singers like Frankie Laine and the chart-topping 'I Believe'. Or Perry Como's 'Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes' and Guy Mitchell's 'She Wears Red Feathers'.

As of midnight yesterday, music released in 1953 becomes copyright-free. If you want to download it to do with as you will, then there's nothing stopping you. Unless you live in America.

There is no annual escape from copyright custody in the land of the free. Extensions have put paid to that and the next expiry date won't happen until 2019. Just as well then that the notion of copyright extensions can't be copyrighted, because people like Cliff Richard would have to bite their lips.

Cliff becomes a pensioner in 2005 but the most successful singles artist in British history will be busier than usual. He is spearheading a campaign to extend the copyright term from the current 50 years to 95 years. It's not hard to see why.

He had some big hits in the 1950s, culminating with a number one in 1959 with 'Living Doll' which went on to become one of the biggest selling records of the entire decade. That gives Cliff about five years to save his 'Living Doll'.

I mention this copyright conundrum because it's symptomatic of what happens when you cross digitalisation with a global distribution system like the internet. The ability to throw bytes around is the easy bit. Trying to throw laws around that is the hard part. Which doesn't mean it won't happen.

Past descriptions of the internet as the 'Wild West' were amusing but only bore scant resemblance to reality. Land stakers and gold panners were nice metaphors for a fledgling internet but nineteenth century economics was more 'Blazing Saddles' than 'The Magnificent Seven'.

The 21st century sheriff is well armed and has treaties instead of wanted posters. He has successfully closed down the file-sharing Napster service, has served thousands of warrants and has not been afraid to prosecute children and grandmothers.

Just before Christmas one of the most successful of file-sharing software, BitTorrent, came off the rails when some of the biggest supporting websites closed down. The latest was www.suprnova.org, which describes itself as "the universal BitTorrent source". At the time of writing, the site announced it was staying closed and would be "no longer offering torrents".

BitTorrent is a different kind of file sharing software from its predecessors. Its construction made it ideally suitable for downloading very large files (500Mb+) and that means movies.

It was estimated by many analysts that up to a third of all traffic on the net last year was BitTorrent. The movie industry had indicated that it learned the lesson from music's alleged woes and was determined to clamp down hard. Looks like it succeeded.

The coming year will be a crucial one for the internet and what happens next. The UN-sponsored World Information Society Summit will be held in Tunisia. It's not until November, but already it's taking on the appearance of 'High Noon'.

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), is getting impatient and increasingly vocal about many aspects of the internet and specifically its governance.

The ITU operates under the auspices of the United Nations. It was founded in 1947 in response to the need to co-ordinate issues with global telephone networks and spectrum licensing. International dial codes, for example, are allocated by the ITU to each state recognised by the UN.

In the past, most national telephone companies were state-owned, in one form or another. When the internet appeared, most of those networks were privatised and the 'information superhighway' was declared officially open. Regulation of the net by governments was to be hands-off. By the time this year is out, we might be see the beginning of the end to all that.

The ITU is clearly making a play for a central role in 'running' the internet. It points to the convergence of voice and data on the same networks and in a document released in December it nailed its colours to the mast: "Put simply, many of the debates on management of internet resources centre around whether the internet should be loosely coordinated by a private corporation, or more formally overseen".

By virtue of its status and history the ITU is geared toward the importance of nation states. The same can't yet be said for the internet. The idea of transcending national boundaries epitomised by 'the global village' gets short shrift from the ITU.

It refers to this idea as being "the antithesis of the model embodied in traditional intergovernmental organisations based on the primacy of national sovereignty". If the ITU succeeds, the global village will be replaced by information societies and networked economies.

By the end of 2005 everything might well be 'All Shook Up'.