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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.'"
My first thought: This is like taxing the postal service to deliver copied works. How is that supposed to work?
And they *say* they'll distribute the funds, but that hasn't seemed to work in the past. Why is this going to work now? Someone needs to realize this can't work in practice.
Remember all that news about the U.S. dollar falling in the global market and all those morons were talking about it? Yeah, well, it actually turns out to have an impact in you making fun of how poor Canada is.
My work here is dung.
Problem #1: There is always someone judging which band/group/artists get into the system, and who gets left out.
Problem #2: Whoever collects the money has an automatic monopoly. No competition means the monopoly can take a bigger cut of the profits.
Problem #3: This creates a problem for new or up-and-coming groups. They often get their exposure by offering their music, or samples of it, for free. Fewer people will hear them when the cost is the same as more established groups.
Why only music? Let's add movies for another $5, because they copy them as well on the internet. $10 more for TV shows (hey, pay-per-view is expensive). I heard they pirate Operating Systems, so let's add another $15 for free Windows and MacOS sharing. And they even pirate expensive CAD applications, let's add $25 for them... Soon no one will be able to afford the internet anymore, only because every creator of intellectual property wants to be subsidized instead of competing in the market.
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
Ahh. You begin to understand the meaning of "socialism". By spreading the cost out among everybody, rather than just the people who use the service, you can reduce the overall cost for everybody. Kind of like how our medical system works: I'm 26 years old, and I had knee surgery in November of 2007. Before then, I'd never been in the hospital, but I'm still paying for the public health care as part of my taxes. Because I'd paid that health care in my taxes, however, my stay in the hospital for the knee surgery (ACL, Meniscus, and shaving a fracture on the underside of the patella that never healed properly) was completely free. Didn't cost me a dime. Nor did the painkillers I got (and never used after the day of the surgery).
It doesn't matter that you aren't using that functionality. By charging you a small amount of money, it reduces the overall cost for everybody else.
You do realise that Canada isn't a capitalist state, right?
Besides which, they may choose to implement it only on residential services. *shrugs* If you have a "residential" account and are using it for "business" purposes, one has to ask the question: why aren't you using a "business" account? I'm in that boat, too, btw. I have a DSL connection and a cable connection. I do all my hosting off the DSL connection, and my personal uses off the Cable connection. I still think it's a good idea.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
$5/month is a bargain for those who enjoy getting new music at the rate of a CD every 2 months. When I was in my 20's, I would have agreed. Today, that's a rate almost 10 times greater than what I've spent on music over the last two years.
$5/month is a great deal for music, and maybe $10/month is good for movies, $30/month should be good for TV on demand compared to cable, and then there's video games, software, radio, subscription news, audiobooks, etc.; all of which might be digitally copied.
You can make a good argument for socialism on necessities like health care, education, road maintenance, etc., etc., but it makes a lot less sense when applied to luxuries. To categorize and treat them in the same way is a mistake.