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EFF Lawyer Argues For Compulsory Music Licenses
An anonymous reader submits "Fred von Lohmann, lead intellectual property lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote an op-ed in the Daily Princetonian urging compulsory licensing of copyrighted music. The system would allow internet users to copy music freely and legally, in exchange for a flat monthly fee to be shared by artists and record labels. He says schools like Princeton might be a good place to test the approach."
...compulsory spell-checker "lcensing"?
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
What about the CDR-tax? can't you consider that a compulsory license?
Seriously though - has any lawyer gave that any kind of thought? To me it's legalizing music piracy since I already paid for it anyway...
btw, FP?
My life in the land of the rising sun.
We are not afraid of the lawyers. Allah has condemned them. They are stupid. They are stupid... and condemned.
Former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
To be honest, it sounds like pie in the sky to me.
Cheers,
Ian
Damn Apple stole all the i's
Mr. von Lohman doesn't know what he's talking about. The issue is not that musicians aren't getting paid. Record companies have been ripping off musicians for years and the RIAA couldn't care less. The issue is that the record companies see file sharing as a threat to their profits (it's not) and their monopoly (it is).
As for the "fee" that Mr. von Lohman suggests, it's already been done. There's already been a fee added to blank media (CDs, etc) for precisely the purpose he describes, but that hasn't stopped the record companies from unleashing their lawyers on anyone and everyone.` And very little, probably zero, of that fee ends up in the pockets of artists
The entertainment industry believes they should have absolute, totalitarian, iron-fisted control and consumers should have nothing. No fair use, no ability to share media among different playback devices, nothing.
I'm not even sure I listen to CD's as often as once a year. And even then, the only music I do listen to is on CD's that I actually bought from a store paying real money already. Am I going to have to pay this compulsory tax on my machine(s)? :(
What about other vices that some people have and others don't? Like Internet porn... Hmmm. Maybe a similar payment scheme for that industry would simplify things as well. A simple tax on everyone who uses an ISP since many people use such materials. Then the money could just be divvied up among those whose pictures were being used and deposited into a public kitty (hey, I didn't make up the term) for safekeeping. Then -- voila' -- justice and administrative simplicity in one tight little package.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
If I hear something good, I'll look it up and dl a couple of tracks. If I like it I go pick up the disk. So, I rip it and send it to my laptop and my MD player. I still will always want a hard copy.
But that's just me.
Merk
We dont need a new license. All we really need is for artists to tell music directly to their fans. Fans, you know the ones who go to concerts to see them live? The people who make musicians most of the money they make to begin with.
CD sales arent important, most musicians dont make money selling CD, they make money on tour, if this is how they make money now why should they care about cd sales? If Musicians want to sell music they can sell CDs at their live shows, people would buy them by the thousands and they'd make plenty of money.
If you have 10,000 people at one of your huge concerts, and you sell 10,000 CDs for $5 each, and because theres no middleman you get 100 percent of the cash, you'd take in $50,000 from one concert.
This is FAR FAR more money than you'd make selling CDs even if you sold a million CDs. Most Musicians dont make any money at all from CD sales and when they do they only make around $50,000 per million CDs sold. meaning for each million, you might get $50,000-100,000.
Musicians may sell a million CDs a year, and make about $50,000 a year, or they can make that much in a day selling direct.
I'm betting ICE-T will make plenty of money, but we shall see.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"The problem is that artists are not getting paid."
I doubt that the artists are the major driving force behind these lawsuits. Indeed, it's the people who own the copyrights who are behind this.
While he mentions there are "many options," I disagree with von Lohmann's "obvious" "right" "answer." (Can you see I'm making bunny ears with my hands?) Frankly, I'm surprised a representative of the EFF would advocate a flat fee to be applied by ISP's to all users - especially universities where many students receive aid to utilize campus equipment and services. How does one justify these fees on a scholorship application?
I can see the Ask Slashdot discussion now.
I think universities are an ideal location for social initiatives, such as the importance of paying for the goods and services you acquire.
I'm just kinda curious why these things always get tested in some area where people can actually afford CD's all the time. I mean if you can afford to go to Princeton I think you can buy the latest N'Sync CD.
Why don't they try this at a large public university where a majority of the students receive financial aid?
If I read correctly, he wants to add an extra fixed fee to all internet access bills. What about when movie studios realize the potential, and want to add their fee, because surely people are downloading movies? And then come the book/whatever digital media publishers - next thing you know only a small percentage of your internet access bill is for actual data transfer costs. I don't think ISP's are going to let this sail, either.
And besides, is Joe Sixpack who's never heard of P2P networks or even mp3s going allow his ISP to tax him for this?
This is just corperate welfare, and shit like this pisses me off about the USA. We the people cant have welfare, but big rich greedy CEOs get bailed out by the government because they cant keep up with the technology or because they make excuses like 911 hurting them,
Who gives a damn? They are companies, they are supposed to die in free market capitalism, this country is becoming a plutocracy where monopolies never die, never get broken up and companies become so powerful they rule over us like 1984.
Heres what I think, I think record companies can adapt or die, period. If they die musicians will make more money anyway, and we will still get free music.
Musicians can sell 1 million CDs and make not a penny, Musicians can make 1 million cds and make only $50,000, so why should they care if you dont buy their CDs when they make more money selling Tshirts?
Face it, Musicians make money because of their fans, the ones who pay to see them live, who follow them around buying their T-Shirts. So heres what I think, why not let the musicians sell directly. Most people who download music for free arent fans, they just want free music, but the fans, they are the ones who will support the musicians by going to concerts.
Musicians can sell new CDs at their concerts, the new CD can be sold at the concert before its on the net, say to about 40-50,000 people at a time for $5-10 each CD, they'd make a fortune.
50x10= how much?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Extending this idea further, I'd say software authors should also be illegible for receiving compensation for illegally downloaded software. I'm a software author myself - where can I sign up?
And why not apply the same thing to books and other materials? That way capitalism, at long last, ushers in the delights of the communist state! (someone insert an "in soviet russia" joke here please, I cannot think of a good one)
Getting back to CD's, it seems obvious that the record companies will pretty quickly stop bothering with physical CD's if something like this becomes law. That seems slightly unfair to people without broadband, but that's life. People survived without canned music for thousands of years, so it won't be a real problem.
There's one thing that is good about this proposal though, which is why I guess the EFF is making it: it doesn't actually take away our toys or our freedom, it just targets our money. And that's a real step forwards, unfortunately.
In the spirit of contribution, here's an idea of my own: forbid the sale of intellectual property altogether. It was never "property" to begin with (that's why it needs to "intellectual" qualifier), so property law does not apply. Artists will have to make a living by doing performing (which is hard work, but hey, look at what the rest of us are doing).
Why not cutting out the middleman. The RIAA and their foreign counterparts are there because in the past there was no easy way to distribute recordings without having to travel around the world to sell your songs and keeping track of your royalties. With the internet that part is easily solved.
;-)
Besides, recording in itself is made possible for everyone due to computer technologies. You don't have to let your songs pressed at a plant anymore. Simply distribute by means of mp3 or any other audio format which you like. This way the artist finally gets payed a decent amount of royalties without some overgrown organisation eating it all.
If it is possible to test this thing out with decent artists (or popular artists, whichever comes first) it could be considered a correct test and results would actually mean something.
But i'm afraid the record companies won't be jumping up and down with joy to actually test this....
And as far as marketing is considered, the internet has shown to be a remarkably good medium to spread things that are considered good in both the quality and ideology sense of the word.
I can name at least 20 non-mainstream bands that I listen to. Some have recording contracts, some just sell CDs off their website. So how do you determine which of these bands gets any of the compulsory license fees? All of them, since they all sell music for profit? Only the ones with record deals? None of them since they are not mainstream? What is the criteria for getting paid? It seems to me that compulsory licensing would never work, since you really can't even decide on who to pay.
Mr. von Lohman's article has more holes than a Service Pack - as Rudy suggests, he doesn't know what the hell he's talking. Some points from his article:
...and a rather lengthy list of draconian measures... None of these efforts by the recording industry has put a single nickel into the pockets of a musician... And none of these efforts has slowed the spread of peer-to-peer ("P2P") file sharing."
... cadets have been disciplined ...Investment in innovative P2P companies has dried up."
" Suing college students. Forcing ISPs to rat out customers."
Both the ISPs nor the R*AA consider netizens as Consumers, not Customers. Big difference.
"Petitioning Congress for unprecedented vigilante powers.
There is no connection between P2P and paying musicians. All these efforts are by the R*AA and their agenda is to increase their profits, not enriching musicians.
"More Americans have used file-sharing software than voted for the President."
What's the point here? People are apathetic to politics, but they are passionate about sharing files..
"Responding to pressure from the entertainment industry, the University of Wyoming is now monitoring
None of the above is due to file sharing per se.
"Some members of Congress.. have suggested that the answer might be to expel, or even jail, college students."
This ought to be condemned directly, rather than tax ALL internet users.
" The hysteria over P2P has gotten out of hand. "
And OTOH, such articles are contributing to the hysteria!
" The problem is that artists are not getting paid. It is time to address the problem."
And that is not being addressed directly by anyone.
"The right answer is obvious: We need to collect a pool of money from Internet users"
This is a gem! Who is 'We'?? Internet users? RIAA? The govt? The artists?
And how can collecting money be a right answer when the problem is one improper distribution of already collected money?
The rest of Mr. Von's article is so full of wishful and Utopian thinking, one wonders how it made to Slashdot!
If such thinking goes on in the EFF, then the FSF would shortly collect money from GNU and Open Source users to pay programmers! And the most 'popular' and 'numerous' programmers wouldn't have written a line of code! Absurd proposal, IMHO.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
To quickly summarize his article: 1. The RIAA's antiP2P fight hurts many and helps no one, 2. Artists need to be paid, 3. Compulsory licensing pays artists, 4. One method of CL could be an ISP flat fee, 5. Many other CL methods exist (examples given) and could be used...
I find it odd that everyone refers to this as a "pipe dream" when it's precisely the way all broadcast media works today. It's called performance rights. I think it's exactly what should be used in light of the weird product versus performance entity that online P2P sharing represents.
If you hear a song on TV, radio, in a restaurant, on a jukebox: artists do indeed get paid for you hearing the music. ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, SOCAN, and numerous other organizations around the world exist precisely to monitor how much of whose music is heard by whom, how often, in what capacity, etc. The Internet - and in particular P2P sharing - could be monitored in this exact way. In fact Napster would have been the easiest of the P2P tools to perform this kind of tracking, and for producing exactly the "P2P Charts" this guy was talking about.
Additionally: the logging for radio play (including XM / Sirius) is now much more precise thanx to organizations like BDS (Broadcast Data Systems) which actually reads in the coding on all CD's ever played on any radio station so that even if I have only one tiny indie recording, and it gets played only one time on one tiny station: I get paid. It used to be much more arbitrary and artists didn't see a dime. All of that is much more tightly monitored now.
As it sits right now: part of your cable bill (or satellite, or XM Radio or whatever) already does go to numerous performing rights organizations, in a very coordinated way. I don't see why people think this is a pipe dream: it already exists! It's just one more method of logging for these organizations (who are, by the way, non-profit.)
Blanket licensing is what should have been used in the first place. Instead: labels and the RIAA see the files as physical goods, instead of the potentially transient files they usually are in the hands of most consumers.
$0.02
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