Kazaa Backs Plan To Bill P2P Music Transfers

Darth Coder writes "From this article at The Age: Kazaa has thrown its weight behind a plan to start billing song swappers for their music downloads. The idea is to phase in a billing mechanism for peer to peer networks, such as Kazaa and Morpheus. Initially payments would be by credit card, but in the future downloads would be automatically detected and a charge added to the monthly internet service provider bill."

Comments

Re:Not feasible

[1u3hr]

If there's anything that raises my hackles a bit, it's the concept of building a business model on illegal behavior as a means of doing legitimate business down the road. That's the opposite of the way things are done in this country.

No, it's exactly how things were done. In the 19th C the US didn't recognise foreign IP rights, to allow its industry to catch up with Europe. That included copyright, so authors like Charles Dickens were screwed by US publishers who just reprinted their books with no payment to him. Only when the US started to want to sell IP, that's when you got sanctimonious about "respecting" it.

Re:Not feasible

[Felipe Hoffa]

I hadn't heard this claim before, and it really sheds some light on USA's postures. Anyway, as you shouldn't believe anything you read on /., I went to find confirmation on this claim, and it seems its true (at least by Harvard School of Law):

A second, related long-term change was the transformation of the United States from a net consumer of intellectual property to a net producer. Until approximately the middle of the nineteenth century, more Americans had an interest in "pirating" copyrighted or patented materials produced by foreigners than had an interest in protecting copyrights or patents against "piracy" by foreigners. The shift in the "balance of trade" had a predictable effect on the stance taken by the United States in international affairs. In the early nineteenth century -- as Charles Dickens learned to his dismay -- the American government was deaf to the pleas of foreign authors that American publishers were reprinting their works without permission. n55 In the late twentieth century, by contrast, the United States has become the world's most vigorous and effective champion of strengthened intellectual-property rights. n56 Thus, for example, the American delegation successfully took a very hard line in the negotiation of the TRIPS agreement, demanding that other nations acquiesce in their generous version of patent and copyright laws. n57 And software piracy in China has triggered a much sterner reaction from the United States than has widespread human-rights violations. n58

The Growth of Intellectual Property: A History of the Ownership of Ideas in the United States.

Fh