Unlimited Legal Music Downloads for $3.95 a Month?

fishmasta writes "I'm at a major university studying the music industry, so we get to regularly talk to executives in the major labels. In a recent talk with someone working at Warner Bros, she brought up an idea they want to try where all file sharing is legalized by paying $4-5 a month through an ISP, all downloads are permanent, and you can get them from any source, and do what you want with them. It seems like some in the industry are starting to 'get it.' I was just wondering what Slashdot thinks of this idea. Would you be willing to pay a small fee each month if you could get all the music you want and have no legal liability?" El-Man has another take on that subject replacing "unlimited" with a set number of licenses: "I believe that people are basically honest (maybe a failing, but it's how I feel), and are quite happy to pay for something of value. With music downloads, the only solution the recording industry has come up with is wrapping digital files with onerous, incompatible DRM systems, suing those whom they say have illegally distributed music (what is it, 13000 people and counting? Surely the courts have better things to do!), and generally not doing themselves or music lovers any good. How about a system, whereby a user can purchase a license for [n] amount of digital music files? Numbers can be, 10, 50, 100, 200, etc. Doesn't matter what the files are, as long as the number is not exceeded. There'd be a lot of details to thrash out, but is this something that is ultimately workable?"

If you were an executive of a medium-to-large sized record company, how would you handle the potential of the Internet?

Comments

Oh Canada...

[Pig Hogger]

This is precisely the system we have in Canada, through a levy on blank media.

The EFF calls it Voluntary Collective Licensing

[Kelerain]

The EFF calls it Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music File Sharing.
It has many similarities to what is described in the article, and I think it is a solution that is best for everyone. Lawrence Lessig, in Free Culture (a great, freely downloadable book on related subjects), calls it a chimera. It is wrong to rob the artists, but it is also wrong for the RIAA to treat their fans as criminals. The solution is in the middle, and I think the collective licensing idea is it.

Re:The EFF calls it Voluntary Collective Licensing

[MsGeek]

Someone mod this up.

And let me also mention that there are perfectly good agencies in existence to collect this "compulsory license," to use the term in US Federal law that made those horrible Radio "pirates" legal. ASCAP. BMI. SESAC. There are others, but those are the biggies. Most musicians who keep their publishing rights (as opposed to those who have signed them away as part of their record deal) are members of one of those three.

My husband's publishing is collected by BMI. They haven't done anything much *for* him, but they haven't done anything *against* him.

A "compulsory license" would cut the gordian knot of "piracy" and obviate the need for Digital Restrictions Management.

However, the RIAA and MPAA actually want MORE. They want to be able to collect RENT on your music. And this is beyond the pale.

Goddamn Finland ...

[halitus]

In Finland there is also a levy on all blank media, but beginning from this year downloading from non-authorized sources became illegal nevertheless. Now we just continue to pay for the privilege which we can't even legally use. Big hooray for the EUCD (European Union Copyright Directive), or at least our implementation of it.

This law was mostly forced on the parliament by our beloved culture minister (former Miss Finland), who insisted that the copyright law should promote just the copyright holders' interests, consumer rights are out of scope and should be addressed in consumer rights legislation (which is likely not going to be modified in near future at all).