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.

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.

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.

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,