Suing Your Customers a Good Idea?

VB writes "Boycott-RIAA is running Fred von Lohmann's article which looks like the ideal answer to solving the P2P problem. He suggests setting up a payment system similar to SESAC, ASCAP, and BMI, collecting organizations for songwriters. This seems such an obvious solution and a great way to get artists paid and give listeners the right to listen to their favorite songs cheaply and keep them out of jail. Why wouldn't this work?"

Comments

Just like an added tax to blanks

[Datagod]

This sounds too much like what happens in Canada, where an extra fee is included in the price of most blank media. This fee is SUPPOSED to be re-distributed to the artists, but it rarely is. It is just another case of assuming people are only interested in copying music, never anything else like actual backups, or even recording your own music. Bunch of bozos.

Re:Just like an added tax to blanks

[LearnToSpell]

America has the same thing (although significantly less - under six cents per CD), but it's not disclosed the way it is in Canada. In both cases, the money is distributed based on album sales, so if you burn Red Hat, Bryan Adams and Madonna get a cut.

My solution

[91degrees]

Actually, I think the solution would be to simply make it a misdemeanor to upload or download music to or from the general public without permission of the copyright holder. Make a small but unpleasant fine (say $100), and make it easy to actually find and charge the file sharers, and very easy to fight if you're wrongly accused.

My problem with the lawsuits, is that it all seems so unfair. Even if people are costing the record industry money, it's highly unlikely that anybody is costing them several thousand dollars. I seriosuly doubt that most of these people charged innocent, and I don't agree that this is fair use, but the response is wrong.

Firstly, in much the same way as I don't approve of the death penalty for pickpockets, I also don't agree that these lawsuits are an appropriate response for file sharers.

Secondly, if the crime is really bad enough to justify a punitive fine, it should be considered a criminal offence. I have never agreed that the civil courts should be able to charge punitive damages. If someone is to be punished, then they should have the rights of all criminals, and be sentenced based on guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Not a mere balance of probabilities.

Re:My solution

[91degrees]

Doh! IHBT. I apologise for being slow. Well, I realised the end bit was just a joke, but you did make some interesting points. Mainly that to make a law regarding copyright infringement, you need the RIAA's backing.

So, I'll finish off with "You soulless minion of the evil copyright monopolists! All you care about is profit, when hard working millionaire artists are starving!"

I don't think a real solution is going to be possible until some radical event intervenes, most likely including the collapse of the RIAA. The RIAA will die, but the music industry will get along just fine without them.

Yes. Causing a cartel to collapse can take time, but it will happen if someone finds a way to pay the musicians more, and charge the customers less.

Re:My solution

[Alsee]

Oop, I didn't mean it as a troll :)
And my post probably did need the Terrorism comment to tip the subtlty balance. I missed adding it by a split-second on the submit button.

Oh, and I just remebered one varient I worked out for paying musicians. The music industry is like 12 (14?) billion or so. If you assume the artists actually get 10% of that, one point something billion (we only need to pay the artists if we don't need publishers to do anything anymore), and 300 million people in the country, it works out to about $4 per person per year. Four freaking dollars per year! If you paid it out of the the Fed budget (ordinary taxes) then you could drop all copyright on music. Not just P2P, but record stores could simply press and sell CD's dirt cheap. And since the Fed budget comes from progressive taxes that means the poor would only pay a dollar or two per year and the wealthiest would pay maybe $20 per year, still practically the price of a single CD.

It may be "communist", but it's damn efficient. And it avoids the issue of people not signing up to pay, a distinct problem of the Slashdot-linked proposal.

I for one would be more than happy to pay an extra $4 per year in taxes to make this whole copyfight go away.

Hmm... cool... copyfight is only one letter off copyright. Didn't even notice that when I first wrote it. Google gives 27,800 hits on copyfight, so I guess I'm not the first to coin it :)

-

Re:Why?

[WindBourne]

yep. This is not about loss of sales of CDs. It is about loss of control by musicians able to do their own thing. That is, they can start on the internet and grow themselves WITHOUT a label. That terrifies all of the labels. When Movies can be made cheaply (which is coming), then we will see MPAA going ape all over the internet.

What songs can't they legally buy?

[ShatteredDream]

Most people's musical interest is in purely mainstream stuff that can be easily acquired legally on a service like iTMS. For those who can't find it there, this makes sense, but please, don't give me that excuse that you can't find most of the MTV/CMT hits on iTMS.

The thing that has always been a thorn in the side of those who don't abuse P2P are the users that download stuff that they could easily have gotten legally because they're too cheap to pay for mainstream stuff. Stuff like that really makes it hard to defend P2P, and that's sad IMO.

I'm sorry, but if you're downloading Brittney Spears or something like that, you have no excuse. Pay The Man. If it's some obscure band, then no big deal since you probably couldn't find a way to legitimately pay for it. Just remember, most of the cool bands out there that don't make too much money are subsidized by the teenieboppers who buy the pop junk. The profitability of the latter covers the lack thereof in the former and gives us more options, not that I'm suggesting that we buy the pop shit just to subsidize our favorite bands.

Ultimately the biggest barrier to this system working is the credit card processors. If they didn't charge so much for small transactions then micropayments would be possible and practical.

Show us the law?

[nurb432]

Not that i don't believe you, but it would be nice to know exactally where it states they are getting tax dollars to show people what is going on.

Re:Why wouldn't it work?

[Apreche]

I think you've got it wrong. It's not that I'm used to getting music for free. I actually believe that music must and should be free. In fact, all information should be free. Recorded music is just that, information. I care about artists though, they are people and I care about people. What people have to understand is this. In a world where all recorded music was free, and nobody expected it to cost money, people who love music will still make music. If those people want to make a living from music they will set up a very economical system by which they will profit from live performances and merchandise. And maybe someone will think up a new way to make money from music besides selling recordings. *gasp*

The best thing is that in a world such as this, which I am pushing for, there will be no super wealthy musicians. I don't know why people have this expecations that artists deserve to be super rich. What's wrong with being a middle class musician? You'r not going hungry.

Music will never die. Musicians will always be around and people will support them. Only the corporate recording studio structure, the super rich megastars with no talent and all image, the giant stadium concerts filled with lights and pyrotechnics. These are the things that will go away. But people will still make music, if only for their own happiness and the happiness of others. Just like programmers will continue to make software for nothing. This is the world we are heading towards. There is no stopping it as long as we keep pushing.

Do not pay for recorded music. Do not pay for software. Do not pay for information. Eventually the corporate structure will either crumble or change. This event will truly lead us to a freer society.

In short. Fuck those people at the record companies who make money and aren't even the people playing the music. And fuck those people with no musical talent riding MTV to fortunes of cash. Hooray for the people making music because they love to. Let those people develop a new business model whereby they can sustain themselves doing something they love.

Suing your customers?

[ImTwoSlick]

Why do I keep hearing people on /. using this phrase? Is it because it carries more shock value? I'm not a fan of the RIAA or their practices, but the people they are suing (warrented or not) are serving out thousands of songs. In this fashon, they are not acting as customers of the RIAA.

Suing customers...

[demon_2k]

Suing customers doesn't change much.
How many cds worth would you buy over say 5 years? Now, when you get sued you might not buy any cds but, for how long will that last? By that time the RIAA got payd for that in a lump sum from the lawsuit payout.

Because...

[3.2.3]

1. Have you ever examined systems like ASCAP? They don't get significant money to the overwhelming number of their members. It's set up to fund just a few artists and ASCAP itself.
2. It would be prohibitively expensive just like the system of payments set up for simulcasting broadcasters. And again, nothing worth mentioning from that system goes to the artists, either.

no U.S. tax on generic CD-Rs

[westlake]

In the U.S. the surchage applies only to blank Music CD-Rs. Standalone CD-R Recorders.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

But the bottom line is that they can't pay armies of lawyers forver and stay in business. In a war of attrition, they must lose and this seems to be the war they're waging.

Which would explain why they have left their customary democrat onyl support and moved to being more neutral. I am guessing that they are desperate for any and all laws that will allow them to lower the costs of lawsuits.

My only question is, why are all these kids today not going to more of the indies? It is about time that they realize that they have a long term interest in how things happen.

I don;t know if anyone has noticed.

[SetupWeasel]

But companies in America not only hate their employees, but they are starting to hate their customers as well.

Remember Best Buy's Demon Customers?

It seems if you are not acting in a company's interests at every moment, the company is out to punish you. And until we start holding corporations accountable for their actions, as a consumer AND a country, they will continue to throw tantrums when things don't go their way.

Spare the rod, spoil the company.

The Sharing License

[bitspotter]

I'm looking for intelligent comments and criticism on this scheme, as well:

http://n8o.r30.net/a2z/drupal/node/view/153

It does not require (though it could benefit from) a central royalty agency, and so it can be implemented by small labels and artists today. At the same time, it ends up being a tractor app for more SSL or IPSEC deployment among common Internet users.

Why The EFF's VCL won't work.

[turnstyle]

The easiest way to see why the EFF's voluntary collective license won't work comes from Fred von Lohmann himself -- for the VCL to work, almost *every* rightsholder would have to voluntarily license, and almost *every* downloader would have to voluntarily pay.

Truthfully, now, isn't that a bit silly?

Next, you have to think about how this system would actually track what people download, in order to divide up any money collected. Do you really want to ask for even more monitoring software added to your ISP on behalf of the govenernment / entertainment industry? (I don't)

They claim that it would render all transfers anonymous, but even if it did (yeah, right) then there would be no way to identify cheats like bots that artificalially increase someone's popularity.

I could go on, but I'll stop there -- the EFF VCL isn't the answer.

IMHO, my suggestion is DRUMS.

Re:Why?

[Psychochild]

Go it alone. Raise your own money, take your own risks and make your own art. Own yourself. It gets cheaper and easier every day. Be happy with this whatever it brings in terms of money and fame.It's what the RIAA fears most.

I agree with that. I'm an artist (a game developer instead of a musician, though), and I've sacrificed deep to remain independent of the machinery of the computer games industry which parallels the music industry. It's not been easy, and I'm still deeply in debt financing this.

The thing that most people forget is that the same intellectual property laws which allow large companies like the RIAA to fuck over the artist also protect the little guy from being equally fucked over by the large companies. You might complain about the abuses of the large companies using intellectual property laws, but without the laws it'd be even worse.

Let me give an example. Let's say I'm a musician and I put together a few songs of my own. Believing that "information wants to be free", I put my songs up on a website and ask for donations or even offer to ship a CD to someone who gives me a little cash. But, now a large publisher finds out about my songs and visits my site. They take the songs, produce a CD, and I never see a dime from it. The large publisher has the advertising and distribution system to do this, and I'm powerless. And before some idiot comes along and says, "But, that's free advertising for you!" let me say this: What makes you think the publisher is going to put my name on the CD they publish? They have no incentive to do so. In fact, they have incentive to put someone else's name on it, so that they can pay that person peanuts to go lip-synch my songs in front of crowds of screaming fans instead of paying me a decent amount of money to live on.

Yes, I'll agree that the current intellectual property laws are insane. The copyright extensions of "forever minus one day" are just stupid (and I'm a registered copyright holder). But, to abolish intellectual property laws because of this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There's real value in protecting the intellectual property of artists so that they can continue to create art, even if this intent has been perverted by the large companies.

Finally, let me say that real change starts with the individual consumer. Everyone here has the real power if they choose to use it. Don't like what the big companies do to artists? Find an independent and support them. The more of us independents that are able to live off of our art, the more it will be seen as a legitimate alternative to the big money machine that crushes the artists. I know in the games industry, people hate what the big publishers do to game developers; the publishers chew them up and spit them out. But, until there's a real, rational way to make a decent amount of money outside of selling your soul to the publisher, only a small number of us are going to risk financial ruin to do what we love independent of the large publishers. Go find an indie game developer, a small local band, or whatever. Let them know that you support them. Encourage them to stay away from the big machine, and to remain independent and free. Get your friends to do the same. This will effect real change instead of posting on Slashdot about how suing P2P users is unfair because people want free music, games, whatever.

Support independent artists and you'll see a real change.

Have fun,

Re:News?

[aero2600-5]

I would love to claim credit for that, but The Register has been calling them that for as long as I can remember.

Either way, it fits very well.

Re:Because...

[maxpublic]

Capitalism requires a free market. Having the RIAA stand as the middleman between music makers and music buyers through oligopolistic practices and then attempting to enforce that oligopoly by buying laws is hardly a function of the free market.

The RIAA has nothing whatsoever to do with capitalism. There's a bloke named Adam Smith who did a pretty good job of explaining how the free market works if you need an education in what capitalism actually is.

Max

Re:You insensitive clod

[ahfoo]

Ah hah!
Well, you see this is a very interesting point in my opinion. In the country where I live, Taiwan, half of the people have this level of DSL service and it costs about twenty three dollars a month with free local phone service included.
Interestingly, we only have one Internet provider that is majority owned by the government. Actually there are sub-providers, but they all have to buy from the government monopoly. So where's the real problem for people in, say for instance, the US? The problem is they're being charged excessively for bandwidth that doesn't cost as much as they are being charged. Why is that? Hmm, could it be that companies like Warner and Sony actually own many ISPs and that the ISPs cooperate with the telecoms to lobby congress to create regulations that artificially keep the prices high? I'm pretty sure that these are the insensitive clods you are looking for.
So, you see, if bandwidth wasn't being artificially limited, you would have no problem trading .shn files and all the artwork you could possibly want. You could trade hi-def concert footage as well. You could trade whatever you wanted. Discs are outdated and if the US wants to slip behind the rest of the world, that's a pity but the rest of the world is not going to slow down and wait for it to catch up.
However, none of this really relates much to my original point which is that there is a big difference between music or the love and appreciation of high quality music and the music game or as they sometimes say, the industry. The latter is what this whole debate is about. It has jack shit to do with music.

Exactly

[sangdrax]

Or, for instance, let downloaders agree they won't sell your music. The big labels aren't going to distribute it for free, but P2P users will.

If you want to stop the P2P distibution as well (or at least make it illegal), let them agree to not distribute your music at all. Since they can point out your website to their friends, they can generate more hits to your webpage.

You can also put an ad in the ID3 tag of the mp3's you offer for download :)