Apr 08 2008
Music industry proposes “piracy tax”
And the madness never ends with the recording industry. Some are finally starting to catch up to the new technology and media, others are stuck in the stone ages. And many of them simply fail to realize that they’d make a lot more money if they stopped selling so much one-hit-wonder garbage. THe latest nonsense? From Broadband Reports:
Last week the music industry caused serious waves by announcing they’d created a new organization tasked with trying to implement a music “piracy tax.” In essence, users would pay their ISP $5-$10 a month for the right to download, copy and share as much music as they’d like without restrictions. Or at least that’s the sales pitch; it’s hard to believe the music industry’s implementation of such a plan wouldn’t have serious flaws.
Yep. You read right. Your ISP would charge you an additional $5-$10 a month, even if you don’t file share (for someone like me, however, this would be a bargain, I guess). The big dilemma here is that filesharing is not going to go away, and there needs to be some sort of mechanism in place where the artists can be duly compensated for that. I don’t have a problem with that, but like many I do have a problem with Digital Rights Management and all of the other bullshit schemes that severely limit what you can do with the media that you paid for.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a more thoughtful approach to the matter, laid out here in detail. It’s more about a good collective licensing plan than a bad ISP tax. Some of the main points:
Voluntary for Artists. Artists shouldn’t be forced to participate if they don’t want to. That said, the vast majority of creators and rightsholders will likely opt in, rather than opt to sue individual Internet users. After all, 99% of all songwriters are members of one of the three performing rights organizations (PROs) we have today. It sure beats having to find and sue every radio station every time it plays your song.
Not a Collecting Society, but Collecting Societies. Freedom of choice for artists only means something if they have options to choose among. Competition is critical to keeping collecting societies honest and transparent. If you compare the three PROs that service songwriters in the US to the unitary, government-backed collecting societies in the rest of the world, our system wins hands down on these fronts.
Voluntary for ISPs. There is no need to force ISPs to offer blanket sharing licenses to music fans. Some ISPs will voluntarily bundle the license with their offerings (”buy the all-you-can-eat music package for $5 more”), some ISPs may choose not to. Universities might choose to buy campus-wide licenses in bulk in order to stop the RIAA’s college litigation campaign. Software companies like LimeWire might choose to bundle the license fee into their software, paid either by subscription fees or advertising. At the end of the day, it’s the individual fan who needs the license, and she should have lots of ways to buy it.
It also stresses the importance of giving the choice of All the Music, From Anywhere, being Technology Agnostic, and ensuring that it Protects Privacy.
It’s really sort of ridiculous that it’s taking the industry so long to catch up. I was filesharing way back in 1998. You’d think they would have come up with a solution in 10 years, no?
4 Responses to “Music industry proposes “piracy tax””
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I’d like to hear JD’s defense of his “file-sharing” activities.
Short answer: because I want to. Long answer: why the hell do I have to explain myself to some anonymous commenter?
Sorry, I thought you knew who I was, namely, Peter, down the hill. I don’t mean to be judgemental, I’m just interested in hearing your rationale; this is not a black and white issue. (I should disclose that I’m a freelancer whose income is indirectly derived from the legitimate transfer and use of certain types of digital information.)
Oh.. that Peter… sorry for my hasty response there, thought you were taunting me or something.
It’s hard for me to justify some aspects of it, to be quite honest, but I’ll try to make some sense of it. First off, I don’t really buy much music (even back in the day), and never new releases, simply because of the fact that there’s not much modern music out there I’d pick up in the first place. I will always buy a CD directly from the artist.
As far as the other stuff, it’s kinda tricky… for things that are out either out of print or only available on a ridiculously expensive import, I don’t see a problem with downloading them. Same with a lot of the spaghetti westerns and such. If my only option is d/ling or spending 40 dollars on an import of questionable quality, I’m gonna d/l.
But I’m also quite guilty of the “see it, grab it” thing.. I have a lot of albums that I’ve grabbed out of curiosity, but never would have bought or sought out in that my interest in them couldn’t possibly justify shelling out the 18 bucks. I’m not saying it’s right by any means. Ya got me. It’s stealing.
I think music is ridiculously overpriced as it is, and I guess there’s not really a sound justification for some of what I do. I wouldn’t oppose what the EFF is proposing, as it seems the fairest model out there. Although it still doesn’t address the major issue of the sheer amount of crap put out by the industry.
Once again, sorry for my hasty, defensive response there.