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Rosen Floats ISP Fee Idea -- Charge Everybody!
iconian writes "Hillary Rosen of RIAA wants to impose a type of fee to ISPs which in turn will be passed to all their customers indiscriminately to recoup supposed damages done by file-sharing. The RIAA considers downloading music illegally over the Internet to be the moral equivalence of stealing. I wonder then what is the moral equivalence of the RIAA taking realized cash from people who do not download music?"
I don't understand why the RIAA thinks they can get away with this kind of thing and NOT have more consumer-backlash! All of these different things the RIAA is doing (flooding networks with bad files, installing "worms" into servers, etc) is just making me less likely to purchase anything from the RIAA.
Ah yes, the "Tax everybody for the crimes of the minority" scheme. you just have to love the busted logic. Where's the love, indeed? Joe over there was speeding so you get a ticket too! I see...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Hey - I'm all for it! If I'm charged a fee for downloading music, by golly, I'm going to download music!
Once I pay $0.01 in loss 'fees' to the RIAA, I consider myself licensed to download whatever is available. If I'm prevented, they should be prepared to be sued for failure to deliver a service for which fees were imposed.
Did you know that in many countries taxes are levied on CD writers and CDR discs because of piracy?
But, put that aside, one can argue this Piracy Tax with logic.
If the RIAA wants to impose a levy on ISPs because of possible file sharing, then shouldn't software companies be allowed to impose a similar levy? And if the RIAA can impose it, what about indie labels? Their music gets stolen too. What about artists who put their graphics online? What about font designers whose fonts get ripped off on alt.binaries.fonts? Surely they should all get a cut?
Logic shows this whole idea is stupid. But will logic be enough to stop the courts? I doubt it. Aristotle said 'The law is reason from my passion'. Not in 2002 it ain't.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Then it certainly means swapping music will become legal, right?
Tell you what. I'll give the RIAA and MPAA each five dollars a year if they'll simply stop trying to sue and get file sharing banned or whatever they're doing. Anyone else find it funny that a corporation is trying desperately to tax us? Corporations can't tax! Interest groups can't tak! Only the government can tax.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
This is about as bright as the already in-effect tax on writeable media. It goes to the RIAA et al to reimburse them for piracy. So we pay for piracy and still can't do it.
Just when you thought that the corporate-owned government couldn't screw us in a more blatant, shameless and imaginative way, along comes Hillary...
My
Limekiller
You call us criminals, and you impose a tax on me for buying CD-Rs (that I use to backup my home directory on), and you flood our p2p networks with garbage and dDoS attacks to make it difficult to use them for even legitimate purposes, and then you throw all kinds of legislation to congress and all kinds of pressure to tech companies to make fair, legal things I do with my computer illegal, because "I might" do something "bad" (i.e., not in the interest of keeping your pocketbooks full) at some point in the future. And now, you want to charge me even more?
Hilary Rosen, congratulations. You will no doubt be the first against the wall. I sincerely and wholeheartedly extend this "Fuck you" into your general direction.
So in the analogy world, is that kinda like...
The RIAA charges NJ Transit because apparently, some people from NJ are going to Tower Records in NY to steal CDs... but the thing is... They're using NJ Transit to do it!!! Bastards!
Heh... so... is that the appropriate analogy here? Any other fun analogies out there?
Guess they REALLY need that 6% back huh? heh.
Like Teddy with an elephant gun.
If this goes through it sounds like dictators are running the show. Yes, it is that bad. What will be next? A special fee for everyone because Ashcroft doesn't think the Americans give enough at church? Or a computer fee for Microsoft because everybody pirates their software? How about a fee for every computer to pay off the software companies?
The RIAA needs to be killed off, it is bad for the people. It is no longer about music, not even in the least. Those of you who are allowed to vote in the states, make sure you vote for people who don't support the RIAA...
Let me see if I get this right:
1. Complain about piracy
2. Lets charge per tape because we have our music pirated.
3. ??
4. Profit!!
5. Complain about piracy
6. Lets collect tax from ISP because we have our music pirated.
7. ??
8. Profit!!
9. Complain about piracy
10. ??
11. ??
12. Profit!!
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
I'm not sure if this post will end up funny, insightful, informative, or interesting, but here goes anyway.
1) The name Hillary has serious connotations to it. I immediately think of annoying, overzealous, stuck-up bitches like Ms. Clinton and Ms. Rosen.
2) Every CD-R disc that you buy is taxed and portions of the money you pay are given to the RIAA and similar organizations. So don't tax my Internet bill as well, and don't take my portable MP3 player either. Some of us actually use our own bought music to listen to.
3) With every new inane law or result of a lawsuit that I hear, I get one step closer to leaving the United States. It's becoming a bloody corporate rape scene here in the States and I for one am just about at the end of my rope.
4) Corporations should not control the government. We need to run the country, it's supposed to be our government. Let's let the citizens reign free and make America the best country it's ever been but without excessive taxation for wanting to listen to music or chat on the Intranet.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
The recording industry already has a tax on most computer media in Canada.
It's already 21 cents per CD, and is going up to 59 cents soon. There's also a fee of 21 cents/megabyte for digital camera memory and tiny HDs because they can also be used in mp3 players.
Taxing ISPs is probably just the next logical step up here
Jason
ProfQuotes
They already have gotten away with that (them and the MPAA). They got a price markup on audio cassettes and video cassettes, to pay for the pirating, and no one complained about it.
Imho, this sort of thing just makes me doubly motivated to go out and download all the music I want. If I'm going to be paying a markup for it, might as well take advantage of it.
Oh, and I haven't bought a single music CD in the last 3 years. And I'm proud of it. Once a system is in place to pay money to artists directly, I'll put some money in towards the artists I like. Until then, I ain't paying squat.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
wrt Kazaa and the like:
"It's clear to me these companies are profiting to the tune of millions and millions of dollars. They must be held accountable," Rosen said.
When did I give Kazaa money again...?
And consumer backlash about bad files, worms, etc? P2P is mainstream. Knowledge of what the **AAs are doing is not mainstream. I got some no-RIAA and no-MPAA stickers from ThinkGeek awhile back. Every single one of my friends (who all use P2P programs) had to ask what those 2 organizations stood for. Very few people who use P2P know about the **AAs and what they're doing, so how can they be pissed about it?
live(free) || die;
"just makes me doubly motivated to go out and download all the music I want"
and ths makes me triply motivated to rip and put up my CDs for download. until now I used to allow only 1 user at a time to download from me, but now I will make it 10. look for kazaa user oggfan.
You, sir, are either a troll or a moron. When you pay taxes to the government, it's because you use their services. I buy maybe 3 CDs per year. Not because I am a pirate, but because I don't like anything that I can buy. Now why should I, a broadband customer and legal owner of my entire playlist, be forced to pay for a service just because I happen to have an internet connection?
Fuck that.
"The image is a dream. The beauty is real. Can you see the difference?" -- Richard Bach, Illusions
This isn't a new law.
This isn't a bill that's on the president's desk.
This isn't a bill that has passed the House.
This isn't a bill that has passed the Senate.
This isn't waiting in committee.
This hasn't even been proposed in either branch.
Hillary cannot propose it in either branch, she hasn't been elected.
Hillary isn't even running for office.
This is so far away from being a law, it isn't even funny. Nobody with the power to make this a law has come forward supporting it. If Fritz Hollings picks it up, then we can be a bit concerned, yet he still needs to convnice a lot of other people this is a good idea before it goes anywhere.
Let's not get too worked up on this one. Keep it on the radar, sure... but there are a lot of other bad ideas that have gotten further in the assembly line than this one, and those are the ones that need our attention.
Not able to get music?? Did music not exist before the RIAA? Did it not exist before Tin Pan Alley, and Casey Casum's top 40 lists?
Brother, I think the question is, where has the music GONE?
There was a time when an artist expected to get paid for his performances of music, and there were many artists, and most of them played regionally. Some of them made a living, most of them didn't. The ones that didn't just enjoyed playing.
Well, these days, some artists make a living, and most of them don't. They tour internationally and expect to get paid for their performances. The only difference now is that the industry (not the artists) take such a large cut, that for an artist to hope for a profit, he must sell in the millions or be worthless.
Where has the music gone? It has gone from being of the people and by the people to being cut up and served from a few mega-stars to the masses who will never have any personal connection to the music they listen to.
In my opinion, therefore, they death of the RIAA *would* be the end of the music world as we know it, and I feel fine. Bring on the new and creative talent!
-- If it ain't broke - overclock it more.
My mother, a standard consumer with nearly no knowledge of how to go about pirating music or burning CDs, pointed out something very simple to me. She said that the price of CDs was the big problem, not the economy so much, and not piracy.
She pointed out how when Wal-Mart or K-Mart or Target have sales on CDs where the price drops quite low, say $10/CD, they sell out of the popular CDs. She also pointed out that in order for everyone to get paid reasonably, the cost to produce a CD would be about $5.
So, when you spend that incredible $20/CD, what are you spending that money on? Padding the pockets of shareholders and paying lawyers chasing "piracy".
My suggestion? When the CDs go on sale, buy 'em. Buy when they're low to show that you WOULD buy them if the were reasonably priced. Of course, getting the CDs you want may be tough then. Additionally, buy used CDs. Buy whenever the music hits a price you consider reasonable. Continue to support your favourite artists by buying t-shirts and going to concerts.
They should really teaching these marketing people some real economics courses. Supply and demand aren't just a simple cross on a chart when you add in alternative methods of obtaining materials. Sometimes crime does pay. Maybe we should have politicians look at it too.
"People are inherently selfish, but still they like to look morally upstanding in others' eyes. No one wants to be the bad guy." -me
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
Ha! It's not theft if I pay 10 bucks a month to my ISP to pay for it.
I always learn about artists from friends, fan websites, and recommendations on Amazon.com, none of which are funded by the RIAA. Sure, if you only buy the latest pop crap, you might be influenced by RIAA advertising, but a lot of us on here listen to music that the RIAA doesn't bother advertising. I feel no moral compunction to pay extra for the RIAA to advertise Britney Spears crap that I don't listen to.
As for the markup, what would you argue? That people should pay the RIAA markup on CD-Rs and then pay again for the CDs at full cost, a price which is illegally fixed at an artificially high level as has been proven in a recent court case? You really think there's something wrong with downloading music for free when you already paid for it by purchasing blank CD-Rs which you need to backup your software?
... and you're charged every time you buy a blank CD, audio cassette or mini-disc.
21 cents per blank cd, 29 cents per audio cassette, and 77 cents per minidisc.
And the Recording industry wants it increased (a 181% increase for CDs), and wants it added to additional media (flash memory cards and DVDs) as well as to MP3 players.
Ironically, none of the money has been paid out to any artists.
1) It's legal to have an mp3 if you've paid for the music
2) CDs are used for things other than music
3) Flash memory cards are used in dozens of things; I have a digital camera that uses them.
The last time the levy was raised (Jan, 2001 I believe) I wrote letters to various Members of Parliment hoping to get it shut down.
This time, even the retailers are getting involved.
The music industry is a dinosaur. I believe artists should be paid for their work, but the cost of a CD is ridiculous; that money is disappearing into music executives pockets; the artist gets next to nothing. I would pay 30 cents per MP3 to download. No shipping, no retail costs, no packaging. That should be fair.
This is only true if you are only interested in mainstream acts (and even then, it doesn't need to be true). None of the music I listen to has anything to do with the RIAA. In fact, I don't think I've listened to an act on an RIAA-backed label in years. I don't need the RIAA to tell me what to listen to; especially considering that they and their lackey labels are complete morons and wouldn't know interesting and artistic music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
Ultimately, that's what the RIAA cares about much more than people copying CDs. They've enjoyed decades of dictating what people get to listen to. Now, their uselessness is becoming clear. There are plenty of ways to find music that you like (All Music, Ptichfork, mp3.com, etc.) and you don't need the RIAA for any of them. In fact, you just might find that your musical interests are invigorated by getting away from all that mind-numbing, mainstream crack.
The internet, and particularly p2p, has irrevocably changed the way I listened to music and exponentially expanded my musical options. If the establishment wants to brand me a criminal for that, so be it. Just look out, cuz once I'm already a criminal, who knows what I might do. ;o)
i agree with you... it's like saying "grocery prices are outrageous... to show my malcontent i'll go rob a grocery store". the legal way to show malcontent is to not purchase the product. if enough ppl do this, things change.
however, i don't think that'll work in this case. if, say, 25% of American music lovers stopped buying CDs published by companies in bed with the RIAA and everyone stopped pirating music... it is my guess the RIAA would still blame bad sales on piracy. it's an easy excuse that execs can use instead of sticking their necks out and going "maybe things need to change."
file swapping will continue to be the RIAA's excuse because it's easier than the truth.
Personally, I'd like to see artists paid out of some sort of slush fund for data tranfers.
You'd have something like the nielsens, which would figure out what people were downloading (by sniffing random packets or whatever - I'm sure the slashdot crowd can come up with a method that would work) and then reimburse whoever owned the copyright to a particular work preportionally out of the general fund.
The PROBLEM is that groups like the RIAA would see to it that the rules were stacked in their favor, so that they got all this money.
Does anyone know how much of the casette surcharge goes to artists? To artists who are not actually affiliated with the RIAA? I can't find an exact figure, but it's not frigging much!
I'd like to see a direct compensation scheme of the good sort in place, since it would allow people to make a living providing culture (which is good) and maximise the VALUE of that culture to society (since anyone could have as much culture as they wanted for a flat rate.)
Unfortunately, the blood suckers at the RIAA have both the power and position to suck such a scheme dry of blood.
While I was looking for a specific breakdown of how the 2%/$2 surcharge on blank CDs/CD burners is disbursed (I can't find it) I did find this interesting article which is worth a read.
The author has very much my take on the economics of the affair, although I disagree that piracy is "basically wrong."
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
it's like saying "grocery prices are outrageous... to show my malcontent i'll go rob a grocery store". the legal way to show malcontent is to not purchase the product. if enough ppl do this, things change.
Brilliant example. If grocery prices were being artificially jacked up by a marketing cartel, farmers were being paid shit wages, and there was a 'tax' on gardening tools and fertiliser that went to the same cartel to cover loss of profits due to home gardening. even if you were only using the tools and fertiliser to grow roses and not vegetables. That's about where we're at.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Rationalizing theft? If this happens, people will be forced to pay their ISPs to pay the RIAA for music they may or may not download. You're paying for the "crime" anyway, you might as well get to commit it. It's not rationalizing, it's getting your money's worth for your ISP bill.
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
Except he was justifying copyright infringement, not shoplifting and/or robbery.
Copying music is legally wrong. It is probably morally and ethically wrong. It is, however, not the same sort of wrong as theft. The problem is complex enough already: nobody needs your loaded analogies muddying the waters.
Once a system is in place to pay money to artists directly, I'll put some money in towards the artists I like. Until then, I ain't paying squat
Time to put your money where your mouth is?
"Imho, this sort of thing just makes me doubly motivated to go out and download all the music I want. If I'm going to be paying a markup for it, might as well take advantage of it."
The way I see it, if they charge me like that, then I'm paying for a service. They're basically saying "It's all okay". So yes, I agree with you, I'd take advantage with it.
What really irks me is that they've provided 0 way of legitimizing any MP3s we all have. They don't acknowledge that if you have a CD of a song that you're a legitimate user. They don't give you a way of purchasing a certificate or license for a digital copy of a song or CD. And if you delete your collection, they don't do anything to subtract that from their 'piracy' reports.
So yeah I'd love to pay a small fee for this, they'd have little room to bitch afterwards.
Too bad they won't try to make money by giving people an opportunity to legitimize what they have.
I support my favorite artists by going to their concerts and buying their non-mainstream CDs out of the trunks of their cars. They mark it up from the 20 cents or so they pay for CDRs to $10, and this way I know for a fact they are getting that well deserved $9.80. The absolute SHIT that the RIAA is pushing is not going to get a dime out of me, and tracks I do download are usually 20 years old from artists I at one time bought the CDs from (not personally, but from the store back when the music industry was less evil). Thing is, a lot of those artists that are putting out shit are only doing it because the record companies are forcing them to become pop dreck. When is the last time a Fleetwood Mac or a Pink Floyd quality gig came on the scene? Somehow I doubt that musical talent has diminished that much, I think the re-packaging is the real downfall of the industry.
- The word is a virus.
IBM owns the songs "2" through "9" and "A" through "F" and "SmileyFace", Bell Labs owns "-128" through "-1", "*", "#", and "13" through "127", the CCITT owns "128" through "255", Control Data owns "Negative 0". Digital Equipment owns "-32768"-"-129" and "256"-"32767", except that John Draper seems to have aquired performance rights for "2600" and somebody scribbled on the documentation on "31337", IBM owns "32768-65535", and by now that's covered all the songs you can play on CD. If they're thinking about using other standards, remember that the IEEE currently has all the floating point numbers, plus and minus infinity, and "Not A Number", so there's no place for the RIAA to hide except back in Analog Land.
And, surely if the music industry can tax us for possible downloads, we should be able to tax them for showing computers in their movies and using "computer hackers" in their plots, because they MIGhT NOT HAVE paid the Cyberspace Society of Computer Programmers, Hackers, and Stereotyped Nerdy Teenagers for using them. The tax obviously ought to be paid in movie downloads.
Besides, as a spokesperson for the Cable TV industry (I own about a 3-millionth of Comcast) it's important to remind the RIAA that most of the Cable Modem companies have strict policies against copyright violation, so our users would never do anything like that and she therefore can't tax us for it, and most of them also have strict policies running anything server-like, including file sharing software, which is bizarrely and suicidally clueless (Duhh, why do you think people buy broadband?) but also means that none of *our* users are doing this. However, we do know that the record labels and their "agents" often use the telephone to talk to their artists, so the telephone companies are as much a part of the music production process as the RIAA is, and we'd like our cut now, please.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I agree with you -- but just one question. Is the blank CD tax a law? When did it pass? How? I would be concerned that this one can follow the same path.
Rationalizing theft. I probably won't win anyone over by arguing about that, so I won't bother.
A fail to see why it's theft to do what I've paid to do. If I pay admission to a theme park, it's not theft when I get on the rides. If I pay for cable, it's not theft if I watch it. So, if I pay for downloading mp3s...
By the same token, it IS theft if the theme park charges me admission and then won't let me ride, and it IS theft if the cable company charges me for cable and then won't give me a signal. So if the RIAA charges me to download mp3s and then tries to stop me...
Per chance, does anyone know of any movements out there to have the major record lables indicted under federal RICO statutes?
Their current business model pretty much rests on bribery, extortion, fraud, theft, computer network tampering, price gouging, and price fixing.
If there is no such movement, perhaps we need someone to organize a website where we can weigh in on this. Instead of debating the theoretical and philosophical aspects of the issues, let's start going on the offensive. Let's begin exposing the RIAA for what it is. Letter and email writing to congresscritters and media types would be a good beginning. If a single major media outlet were to give coverage to the necessary topics, it would be a great boost to the cause. For once in the 20 years of corrupt business practices within the major media companies, let's put them on the defensive and make them justify their own theft.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
That's about where we're at.
That's right, and it's also why this is such an incredibly stupid idea. The biggest reason it's so stupid is that it a) penalizes people that have nothing to do with piracy, and b) creates a revenue stream that is based on nothing but speculation- it completely distorts important issues like market demand. If this is going to be the new game in town, then why don't banks ask for an special tax on cars, since they're often used as a means to escape after a robbery. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Imagine being a deaf Internet user.
s/music/my webpage/g
s/music/a book/g
Copying music is not wrong: it is your intent of what you do with that copy that is the issue. In the US, it has been deemed a person can make an archival copy of items (music, software).. but if you then distribute that copy you have suddenly crossed the line into illegality.
(and for what its worth, I think the RIAA proposal is bullshit.. but if some people keep trying to justify p2p transferring of copyrighted works then you only give them more ammo.)
-'fester
It has been known for a long time that the best, most profitable music and movies are made by people on drugs. And while most artists bear the financial burden of drugs through direct charges, insurance increases, legal fees, and shortened careers, the largest reward is reaped by RIAA executives who enjoy the fruits of artists labors without the associated early Cocane burnout. This is not a fair arrangement.
Therefore, it is proposed that middle-level management and above in all music-related fields be taxed at 4% of income, for the express purpose of using said money to fund such worthy prehab programs as Raves, House Parties, Bashes, Shindigs, Galas, Grateful Dead tribute concerts, and the city of Berkeley, California. In such a fashion, artists and music would be supported by those who have so far stolen their work without returning their fair share.
This levy would, of course, be void for any executive that could prove solidarity with the plight of the musicians through nosebleeds, swollen arteries, ADHD, or the propensity to use the word "Dude" as if it were insightful.
The ______ Agenda
No, that's still not the same.
When you steal the groceries from the shop behind the corner, you take it from the owner of the shop and he loses money spent on it. When you take someone's car, you take away his posession. When you photocopy a dollar bill and circulate it, you take away a bit of value from every single dollar bill on this planet.
When you copy music you don't do any of this. You don't deprieve original of its value, you don't take the money spent on its creation. There is very questionable point of lost revenue, but thats just it: it's questionable.
Go figure...
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162