Viacom, Disney, Microsoft, and MySpace all have a couple of things in common?

Apart from being huge media companies with a lot of financial clout, they also want to set some “guidelines” in order to maintain copyrights online.

The four (seems a strangely small group considering the proportions of the effort, no?) have joined hands to work to establish a commonly acceptable system which will purportedly “stop pirated material” from proliferating and generally protect copyright rules from widespread subversion.

And all four will fail at the job. Well, okay, maybe they will, maybe they won’t. To tell you the truth, I’ve no clue how things will shake out. 

But I kind of find it troubling that corporations are working in unison on technologies to address the issue of peer-to-peer piracy and whatnot, rather than, you know, the institution whose role it is to protect copyright law: government. 

So troubling, in fact, that one can’t help but get a little suspicious about the true intentions of this wee project they’ve all bandied together on.

Job For The Copyright Board?

Now, I’m not trying to conjure up a conspiracy theory here. To be honest, I think all involved with this newly announced effort are participating with nary an ill intention whatsoever. 

But really, should not the Copyright Board or some other group of suits be doing this kind of generalized work?

Alright, so as I see it, of the four initial participants (the BBC has reported that analysts predict Google will join the fold sometime or other), Viacom and Disney definitely have incentive to keep their respective catalogues from being leaked, pilfered, and distributed illegally.

And because Microsoft and MySpace are venturing more and more into the world of media (as distributors), they’ve got reason to maintain the media companies’ good graces. 

Thus they’ve all at once sat down at the proverbial table to discuss potential solutions to the problems they all now (and will continue to) contend with.