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Suing Your Customers a Good Idea?

Posted by michael on from the nothing-better-comes-to-mind dept.

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?"

1 of 305 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why wouldn't it work? by sploxx · · Score: 0, Troll

    I actually believe that music must and should be free. In fact, all information should be free.
    I hope (and I also think) that you do not include privately exchanged emails and similar things in your definition of information :-)

    Instead of your model of completely abolishing copyright, I would rather like to see a somewhat smaller change: Abolishment of copyright law concerning private, IMHO "fair" use. Do whatever you wish with your software, your music etc., share it by p2p, WiFi-p2p, f2f, whatever. Reverse engineer it.

    But don't sell it for profit in public. Of course noone can deny that there would be somewhat grey areas (e.g. flea markets).

    Leave the copyright as it is in the B2B area. Companies have and should have no right to "privacy" about what is installed on their computers.

    And, yes, I'm sure many people would still buy music and video games, just for the shiny package and the printed manual. At moderate prices.

    After all, privacy is a _much more_ fundamental right than the ability to control copies by some media conglomerates (or even greedy individuals). Somehow, this argument got lost in the whole discussion about copyright.
    I think, Mute, Freenet etc. will inevitably drive the discussion into this direction. You'd have to outlaw such tools to control copyright violations. Or you need mandatory, wide-spread DRM.

    If one is pessimistic (I'm somewhat), there may be no discussion in society at all (supressed by those who have the power).

    Here in germany, it's actually a quite "funny" situation. Everyone has to pay substantial fees on PCs, DVD/CD recorders, media etc. to compensate the (registered) authors for losses by such fair use copies but since some recent changes in copyright law, it is not allowed
    to copy copy-protected media.