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Canadian Songwriters Propose Collective Licensing
aboivin writes "The Songwriters association of Canada has put forward a proposition for collective licensing of music for personal use. The Right to Equitable Remuneration for Music File Sharing would legalize sharing of a copy of a copyrighted musical work without motive of financial gain, for a monthly fee of $5.00 applied to all Canadian internet connections, which would be distributed to creators and rights holders. From the proposal: 'File sharing is both a revolution in music distribution and a very positive phenomenon. The volunteer efforts of millions of music fans creates a much greater choice of repertoire for consumers while allowing songs — both new and old, well known and obscure — to be heard. All that's needed to fulfill this revolution in distribution is a way for Creators and rights holders to be paid.'"
Probably the same way the blank media levy is collected/distributed: lump sums given out to the songwriters' and musicians' guilds, which is then distributed by the guild on basis of need. Quite a fair way to do things, really, and one that the majority of Canadian musicians support wholeheartedly.
I agree with the proposal with one caveat: it shouldn't be applied to *all* internet connections. Just the so-called "high speed" ones. Anything 1mbit and over. Anything under that isn't fast enough to make filesharing worthwhile. More importantly, you can get a "high speed" connection in Canada that's 128kbit or 256kbit. For surfing the Internet or checking your e-mail, it's plenty fast enough. Even a 1mbit connection, which is one step above the entry level, is plenty fast enough for surfing and e-mail, and a lot of people will choose these slower services because they are priced much lower than an actual high speed connection.
We shouldn't be applying a levy of $5/month to a dialup Internet account that, itself, only costs $2.95/month, especially when the purpose of that levy is to combat a practice on the Internet that the $3/month connection simply isn't capable of. I'd happily pay an extra $5/month on my 7mbit cable connection, however, if it got rid of the legal grey areas surroudning file sharing. (how it's legal for me to download, sorta, but illegal for me to upload, for example)
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
What about the three separate connections; two DSL and one cable, that I administer for remote locations to the business I run the network for? I have the firewalls and proxies set up to stop employees from downloading music and video, so should I have to pay $15 per month for a "service" which I am, in fact, expressely forbidding the networks to access?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Being a Canadian, this probably affects me more than the majority of readers here.
I might go for this, but the implementation would be tricky. What I have in mind is the following.
1) Do not tack this directly onto the internet bill without consent of the user.
2) Should be $3.00 or lower, scaled to the quantity of songs downloaded
3) Should take the form of a hook (like an encryption key) that identifies the user of a file sharing app has having a legitimate license.
4) The key should be able to confirm that the license is legit and up to date, and nothing else (no way to trace a key to a particular user).
END COMMUNICATION