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$5 Per Month Fee Proposed For Legal Music P2P
sneakyimp writes "Both Wired and Ars Technica have reports on Jim Griffin's proposal that ISPs charge each broadband customer $5 per month to subsidize the ailing music industry. The resulting fund would ostensibly 'compensate songwriters, performers, publishers and music labels.'
Although no specific version of the proposal has been referenced, a number of controversies are inherent to the plan: How is the money really divided? What happens when the MPAA, the Business Software Alliance, and various other industry groups want their own surcharge added? What about the supposed majority of broadband customers who never download illegal music? Griffin discussed the plan further at SXSW . We've previously discussed a similar proposal from the Songwriters Association of Canada.
Presumes you're a criminal otherwise.
And by paying it, you admit it.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Or the record industry could stop living in the past and have modern cost effective (fair) distribution model that makes sense to modern internet users.
So, if I'm charged this $5/mo fee does that mean they can no longer prosecute me if I download music? Or are they going to do that as well?
Now, if we were talking about a $5/mo (or even $10/mo) fee to be able to download and listen to, burn, copy, whatever as much high quality DRM-free music as I want.... well, suffice to say that I'd be too busy clicking links and breaking out my credit card to make this post.
$0.01 for everyone else.
Basically the same amount our northern neighbors pay (as taxes) to keep their MAFIAA on a leash? Maybe we should just copy their entire section of IP laws.
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
Didn't they do this with blank CDs a few years ago? Then the indemnification ended, but the tax that's passed back to the RIAA remained.
Maybe if the $5/mo was a voluntary "add on" fee granting immunity from copyright suits it might work.
Oh, almost forgot to include the obligatory Fuck The RIAA line.
...to support illegally download music?
Who'll pay extra for iTunes if they're already paying to use P2P whether they like it or not?
This is an utterly ridiculous idea. It taxes those who don't download copyright-infringing files to pay for those who do - and who will probably continue to download much more than $5-worth of tracks, subsidised by others.
Illegal downloaders need to stop freeloading off the rest of us and pay for the things they want.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Give everyone that doesn't download music a $5 discount? They already charge most of us up the ass and throttle d/l and u/l speeds as it is. Why should we pay anything additional?
We would need much larger tubes.
I see this as their new business model. They may not make mega-millions with a flat tax like this, but they will always have the bare minimum to survive.
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
It may sound like a noble and interesting idea to some, but there are other issues besides the fact that it will be nearly impossible to divide the money correctly.
The real issue here is the morality of the fee. Those who are pirates download content worth significantly more than $5. This fee would be no problem to a person who downloads hundreds of songs per month, but a technologically impaired senior who wants to communicate with his children who live in another state/country will also have to pay.
If such fee would pass, then I say we should pay $1 to reimburse victims of pedophilia, who were victimized over the internet. And many other types of victims, of course.
My point is obviously that the music industry should have no say in this matter, nor any other industry or company. Or we could flip the coin and make the music industry pay for the rehabilitation of all drug users who snorted coke while listening to Kurt Cobain, or small girls who cannot handle the pressure of looking like Christina Aguilera.
Full Tilt
This is outstanding. Pay the $5, dissolve the RIAA, wait a month, and drop the fee.
The "what if I don't want to" argument is a little weak in my opinion. If you are forced to pay it, I'm guessing you would end up using it (since you are already paying). If I had access to all of the songs on the iTunes Music Store, you can bet I would take advantage of it. I don't now because I don't want to pay for the tracks.
The "what about other groups" argument is fantastic. I don't know how someone could reasonably question how something like this become a precedent, causing every group under the sun to suddenly jump out and demand the same thing.
What I worry about is what happens if this goes into effect and gets challenged. I think it's safe to say that someone could mount a good challenge here in the US based on some law. So if I "take advantage" of this forced fee then it gets ruled illegal, do they get to come after me for all the music I "stole"? Do I have to give up everything I downloaded under the plan?
The "how do we divvy up the loot" question is the worst one. Do we put one group in charge (like the RIAA)? Do we really expect them to be fair to all the artists who aren't a member of their group? Or do only they get paid, thus effectively making the a de-facto monopoly? Does that mean there are "good" artists (who my fee pays for) and "bad" artists (who my fee doesn't, thus I can't download their stuff)? Should we let the government run it, thus making it an entitlement bureaucracy? Does every artist get an even share (good for little guys), or do the big artists get more (they are more popular... after all). Does the medium matter? Does my fee pay for me to have the rights to get free sheet music? Why not? If I'm an artist, can I opt out of this saying "no one downloads my music, despite the fee"?
There are so many unanswered/unanswerable questions for this. I don't know how they can push this with a straight face. I'm guessing most of their answers would be something along the lines of "don't worry about it".
The Canadian media tax doesn't seem to have helped much, or solved any of these questions. Why would the US be any different... just because it's a different medium being taxed?
They see $$$, they want in. They could build a subscription MP3 store (real MP3s), band together, and create a de facto (optional) "music tax" that people could pay and use. They don't need to force it through regulation... unless they aren't really looking out for our interests. That can't be true...
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
For anyone who's interested, I've posted my correspondence with Jim. He definitely seems to be a lobbyist of some kind. He doesn't address the issues, he just doles out some rhetoric.
Make a good product and it will sell. Don't charge me when I avoid your product.
P2P nothing.
If I'm paying you a monthly fee, you are going to be hosting a reliable service. You will have an iTunes music store/Amazon store/whatever.
If I pay you, I'm not putting up with random qualities, names, ID3 tags, missing seeders, etc. I don't care how obscure my tastes, you have to host it for me. That's our deal: I pay, you let me download.
I expect better service than P2P for $5 a month.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I'm not surprised that the proponents of the music industry would come up with concepts such as these. I'm sure they rationalize that people already subsidize shoplifters through higher prices at the store, so since broadband is used to pilfer their product, every one who uses broadband should pay. While it's true, we all pay higher costs due to shoplifters, the store has an incentive to reduce losses or the prices will become prohibitive and customers won't shop there any longer. This surcharge does nothing to cause music producers to change their ways to prevent losses, it forces the liability of bad business decisions upon non-customers.
Those who think this is a good idea should take note that nowhere in this Jim person's argument does it stipulate that the $5 per month surcharge is blanket authorization to download everything and anything. Your $5 gets you the privilege of still paying $.99 at iTunes, or a $12 per month Rhapsody account or running out to Wal-Mart and plunking down $20 for a CD. The music industry will continue to label the internet the tool of choice for music "thieves", because doing so is necessary to justify the $5 per month stipend.
I'm hopeful that the ISPs will tell these people to go get bent. There is a very real possibility of a consumer boycott over this issue, especially from the honest customers who do not download music. If my ISP proudly proclaimed they were collecting this fee, I'd go without broadband.
As far as seeking legislative relief, I don't think too many legislators are going to want to be seen with the hot potato of asking consumers to fork over $5 to help the music industry. It's an election year and a down economy, what fool would suggest...aside from Ted Stevens, Pelosi...well, maybe seeking legislative relief isn't such an idle threat. Get ready to write a lot of letters.
The solution:
-- There should be a license that you pay for only if you're interested, and if you pay this license you're allowed to download music.
By subscribing to the license, you make a legally binding promise to follow certain simple rules that apply for this license.
-- If you also want to make music available for others to download, you indicate this when you subscribe to the license. This again involves a legally binding promise to follow rules that apply for this kind of license.
-- When you make music available for others to download, you must use software that is approved for this purpose. Getting such software approved should be very easy, because the requirements are simple.
One requirement is that this software record and report statistics about how many times each song is downloaded. The money from the license fees gets distributed to artists and music companies based on these statistics.
Another requirement on this software is that it make an automatic check that the software that requests the download displays a currently valid license.
With this scheme, regular Joes who provide music for others have no economic incentive to trick the system. That's important. It means that lots of software can be easily approved.
Music companies do have an incentive to trick the system, so as to inflate their own statistics. Checks against this will be needed. In addition, because of this, the statistics should probably be arranged in such a way that any number of downloads from the same license counts as a single download.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
In Canada we already subsidies "Canadian" content/culture from public funds. And it's different from a tax, since in a tax the money goes to the government. In this case the money goes to artists (supposedly). Functionally (to the end user) there is no difference at all. On the note of subsidizing culture with public funds, I totally think that government should be doing that. Museums, art galleries, stuff like that are a wonderful resource for the people.
I pay my 5 bucks, and now Steve Jobs will let me download as much as I want from iTunes for free!!! Same with Amazon. Right?
Or do you expect me to pay twicT?
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
I wonder what would happen if someone figured out how to torrent a car.
We are laying the legal groundwork for that problem right now (albeit unknowingly). With nanomachines on the horizon, it won't be more than 50 years till you will have access to a formulator capable of replicating a car. But someone will still have to design the car in the first place. We will be up against the exact same problems we are now with music. People will be trading atom-level model files for Ferraris over the intarwebs. Toss in your old car, a design file, and a whole lot of power (assuming we haven't hit, or have solved, the peak oil problem by then), and you get a new car.
It will be the end of natural scarcity of manufactured goods, but not the end of scarcity of energy, good design, or the rarer raw materials. While I loathe the current state of Intellectual Monopoly law, it will be necessary to continue to compensate creators (not necessarily labels) for their work, and the fields where the cost of design can be hidden in the price of the manufactured good will dwindle.
The laws that will protect cars 50 years from now are the laws we are using today to attempt to protect music. Maybe cops will ask for "License, registration, and proof of designer royalty payment, please?"
But then, we'll probably just be the computers' pets by then anyway, so no need to worry.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
If the music I wanted was freely and legally available for download from the internet in lossless un-DRMed form I'd be perfectly willing to sell out $5 per month for access to this music. I currently spend about 10 times that per month for my music acquisitions.
They've been repeatedly telling us that the minority of users use the majority of the bandwidth (for P2P). So why would they tax the majority of users then? Of course it makes no sense.
The sports rebroadcasting fee, to compensate sports networks for their broadcasts that you retransmit
:-)
The politicians opponents fee, to compensate them for money that you don't give to their campaigns
The tapped powergrid fee, because you might tap into the power grid at some point
The Emperor's club fee, because you might use the services of an illegal prostitution ring and not get caught (and not be the governor of a large state).
What? You don't do any of these things? Then why should you pay for it? Instead, you should pay a fee to ME, for no particular reason, other than I think you should give me your money whether I've given you anything in return or not!
None of the bands I listen to and download are RIAA members. How will my money get to them?
The music industry is moved by a few major labels, and those labels hate variety which is exactly what p2p provides (and for free). If people are given a free run of the artist they can listen to their choices will expand a lot, and to be competitive major labels would need to sign a wider variety of acts thus cutting in on the corporate profit. Not to mention all the other problems with how reimbursement is going to work with this system. Personally I think artist will give up trying to sell the music, and focus more on property rights, merchandise, and concerts.
Everyone who wants legal music pays $5/month, and the money is pooled, with the entire pot allocated to artists proportional to downloads. It would bring the underground P2P industry "above the radar" and the artists would get a tiny share of a huge pie instead of a big share of nothing. Honestly, I spend even LESS on music now, but $60/yr is about as much as this is worth to me.
Even by the most conservative estimates, it would produce hundreds of millions of dollars per year in royalties. Or they can maintain the status quo and get nearly nothing. If it were me, I would take the money. But what do I know?
Back when the original Napster was under attack, I suggested this as a reasonable plan. Nobody thought the music industry would accept an "all you can eat" plan at such a low price. But today's P2P reality is exactly that at a price of $0. When the music industry finished overplaying their hand, $0 was the only price left on the table. It's like playing "Deal or No Deal", turning down all the offers, holding out for the $1M prize, only to watch the entire board clear, leaving the $.01 prize. Considering where the music industry is today, $5/month from a huge population is no longer a lowball offer.
If it were ridiculously cheap, I would have no problem with throwing some coffee money into music. It would probably renew my interest in the product. As it stands today, I have an Ipod full of ripped CDs I bought over the last 20 years, and I can listen to the classics indefinitely. At $18.95 per disc, I won't be seen in the music store anytime soon.
How many dollars per month for
Movies
Games
Software Applications
TV
Books
Comics
Anime
Audiobooks
Pictures
It adds up. And how are they going to determine who gets how much? Oh I guess I know the answer to that. The collector agency gets the bigger part, and the rest is distributed based on some kind of algorithm that favors the current big coorporations.
You say that as if duplicating your CDs was ever against the law, here or in Canada. Copyright is supposed to be a civil matter between private parties about the right to commercially publish works. Applying that to personal coppies has always been a stretch.
I recall some controversy about artists never got their cut of the digital media tax, not even RIAA signed artists, and it hurt local artists. Looks like it never got better.
I expect ISP fees to be exactly like that. In effect, they will outlaw what's already allowed and steer yet more money to an industry that has long ago ceased to perform a useful function.
No calls now, I'm
With nanomachines on the horizon, it won't be more than 50 years till you will have access to a formulator capable of replicating a car
Make mine a flying car.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
I do use my broadband connection every day to get the news, read scientific journals, waste time on /., what-have-you.
I don't listen to RIAA music any more, much less download their crappy tracks, buy them from iTunes, or heaven forbid buy CDs, because I want nothing to do with them whatsoever.
Assessing a $5/mo. fee to every broadband user is the last thing that should happen. 10 years ago, OK, that was something we could have talked about. And did talk about. But the music industry wanted no part of it.
Now it's too late. The world and its musicians and its fans have all moved on.
Let the RIAA die, and rot.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Just some clarification: I can and do pay for content, and I am far more likely to when I can get it on my terms.
Just tell me where to sign up to the MPAA-sponsored BitTorrent tracker, and I'll pay for it. Here's my wishlist:
I'm not sure how much I would be willing to pay for that service, but it's at least $5/month.
As it is, there's really no service which can quite replace The Pirate Bay.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Seven years ago, Napster offered to partner up with the music companies, charge a monthly fee, and go legit. They had a beautiful, efficient 'walled garden' infrastructure, selection surpassing the iTunes store, nearly 15 million active users, and even though there was openNap and Gnutella, these were fringe tools. Napster had no *real* competition, they were a de facto standard. The market was sewn up.
Napster offered multiple times to partner up with the RIAA labels to create a subscription-based model. If they'd have kept just 1/3 of their userbase at $10 a month (highly reasonable) and growth had remained flat (highly unlikely), they'd have pulled in $600mil in the first year, without ever having spent a dime on marketing or distribution. $600mil a year in free money with incredible growth potential, and the RIAA wouldn't have had to lift a finger.
$600mil in revenue in just the first year, for doing nothing. And they said no, shut down Napster, and unleashed the unkillable hydra of gnutella/bittorrent/FastTrack/etc.
NOW the RIAA wants a surcharge? No. You had your chance at the golden egg, and relevancy in the future of music, and you chose instead to cut the goose's throat. We're not going to subsidize you now.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
RIAA wants the government to mandate payments to them from essentially everybody?
That would be like insurance companies wanting auto insurance to be mandatory.
Or hospitals being in favor of mandatory medical insurance.
Or Microsoft insisting on Windows installed on every PC
Or sports teams wanting every citizen to subsidize their business.
or... wait... what were we talking about again?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Or maybe breaking the law has nothing to do with right and wrong. Copyright, in its current form, is a corrupt and unjust law that actually causes the opposite of its original purpose as defined by the constitution. No one should feel any qualms about breaking it.
How about this: First of all, I don't think this is "fair" in any sense, but to end all the copyright nonsense these days I'd be willing to entertain this.
First of all, let's get a reasonable amount. Like, say, 25 cents a month. Maybe as much as a buck. The BSA and the MPAA can have the same. So can anybody else who feels their Imaginary Property rights are being violated. But in exchange, two conditions:
1) they accept that they can never again object to any form of private, non-commercial copyright infringement in any way, shape, or form, in any jurisdiction this side of the outer rings of Jupiter.
(2)that they are expressly prohibited from producing, distributing, or employing any form of DRM technology in any way shape or form, in any jurisdiction.
Violation of either of these two conditions will result in them having to repay the amount of money they have received from this "statutory license" (or whatever we decide to call it) X 100.
Let me repeat myself. I don't think this is 'fair', but politics, like life, is compromise. I don't think the RIAA deserves this money any more than a mobster "deserves" his protection money. But to be 100% sure that we'd never again have a single case of grandmother being sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars over a dozen top 40 tracks that'll be forgotten in 10 years, and be able to back up my box set of "Band of Brothers" that I paid $150 for, it'd be worth it.
But not at $5/month. I haven't averaged spending $5/month on CDs since about 1993.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Damn rabbits, coming to our country, stealing our jobs, and then losing them at the first sign of headlights!
Let p2p run rampant. Don't sue anybody. Then watch and see if the music/movie industries up and die. If they do, then consider whether or not legislation is needed to revivify them. If they do not die, then admit that the legislation was never needed in the first place, and just don't bother with it.
Personally, I am tired of this zero-evidence notion that file sharing will kill the industry. Every time we have heard this line in the past (for video cassettes, cassette tapes, CD-R, etc.), it has been proven false. Let's try it and find out. Once the real evidence is in, then I will be interested in discussing responses.
I am thinking of the "Slippery Slope" that this article presents. Here we have a very eloquent speaker stating that the multi billion dollar recording industry is taking a hammering for lack of sales. So the sweetest thing, the nicest thing to do is that all of us donate money to this industry; Right? Then when this happens those people that were affected by the "Globalization" of the U.S.Economy from everything manufactured, to services rendered can now sue for monetary damages. One can argue that the flooding of manufactured goods has been handled fairly. Also one could argue that the service sector has not been hammered at all, because, well there are plenty of jobs to go around.
I am kind of confused right now, nothing is making sense. Corporations, and Narrowly defined businesses running the government does not seem to be working very well.
Let p2p run rampant. Don't sue anybody. Then watch and see if the music/movie industries up and die. If they do, then consider whether or not legislation is needed to revivify them. If they do not die, then admit that the legislation was never needed in the first place, and just don't bother with it.
They won't. This was the biggest year for the MPAA ever.
After all, I am strangely colored.
I think it would be unfair to mod the parent as troll. True, the comment ignores the fact that art adds a lot to people's lives, is an historically important form of artistic expression, has cultural value as a tool for cohesion and relationship-building, and is very enjoyable. On the other hand, it picks up on some important points. Firstly, music as a commercial product is, in the end, a luxury item. The amount of time and effort spent trying to get around paying for it would only make moral sense if it were something like food or water. If you can't afford to buy it, you can still hear music on the radio, the TV, in bars and clubs and pubs and many free live venues. You can make it yourself, on your own, with friends. Secondly, the amount of money paid for the works of top artists is pretty extortionate. Why is Paul McCartney so rich when people who teach, nurse, clear our garbage, can't afford to pay their bills? I would suggest it's because we have a pretty screwed-up understanding of value.
These two points might seem to contradict each other. But they both add up to the fact that we place too much importance on commercial music (which is a different thing from music as an art or an abstract idea.) So I think the parent deserves better than to be called a troll, even if the phrasing of the comment is unfortunate.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Actually, it will be the botnet operators that will get the cash. They will become music artists and publishers. They will generate some absolute trash and call it music. Then their botnet of millions of r3-0wn3d computers will be downloading this trash en masse. Their crap will skyrocket to the top ten. They rake in millions. On the bright side, they might give up filling our mailboxes with trash.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
They won't. This was the biggest year for the MPAA evuer.
And despite most of the movies last year being complete shit, too. Boggles the mind.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
hmm, was there not some USA bigwig that ones stated something to the tune that no market had the right to exist for eternity?
the thing about the net and the computer is that in one box and connection one have (to go back to about the industrial age) a telegraph, a printing press and a gramophone all hooked together so that the telegraph can feed of stuff to the other ones.
at that time, with a printing press being a room sized device operated by 1 or more person as a full day job, that would be unthinkable. but today, thanks to the wonders of the microprocessor, thats not only possible, but increasingly common place.
thing is that we are still operating with industrial age laws, when the tech have moved on like no-one at that time could have foretold.
yes, riaa and the rest keeps a whole lot of people with work. but was there not cries about loss of work when the assembly line came to be, and continued on to become increasingly automated?
maybe its time we think about alternate ways of distributing resources? ways not hooked on the idea of scarcity in some form or other for other things then physical resources?
maybe the net, and all that it can contain, should be put under some kind of operation similar to a public library? only that said public library to is a creation of a age where books where a scarce resource, turning their content scarce as well. but today the physical book may be scarce, but the content of it do not have to be. the creativity of the human mind, when not directed towards creating a physical construct, have been set free like no time before.
question is, how are those creative minds supposed to live on? as is, we are so used to the physical media that we cant really imagine a world without it. but if one manage to distance oneself from that idea, then what? what alternate paths do then appear?
to re-imagine the way to launch programs in kde, the developers had to stop referring to the launcher as a menu, this because the very word was loaded with images of ordered lists of items, and one could not shake it.
so it may well be that we have to stop talking about copyright, or any other kinds of rights, as these are now loaded words. words that force our minds into preset paths.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Another problem is determining which song writers/performers/publishers/labels should get the money to begin with. Do they pay people more who get their music pirated more? Do they pay people as a ratio of radio air time? Do they just evenly distribute the money? Like - if that's the case - I'm going to start putting random samples into a synth that just chops them up and spits them out, use every computer controlled sequencing feature, and then demand my fuckin' cut.
"hmm, was there not some USA bigwig that ones stated something to the tune that no market had the right to exist for eternity?"
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
Robert A. Heinlein, "Life-Line", 1939.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Do you think Hollywood is going to turn over the rights to let you copy whatever you want of their stuff for a few paltry million $ that this would bring in?!?! Even if every single internet user in the United States paid $5 (much less the pathetic $1 you're suggesting), that would only be about $775 million.
Paltry? Umm... in December 2006 there were 82.5 million active broadband lines in the U.S. (see: Networked Nation: Broadband In America 2007). The proposal is $5 per month per broadband customer. This is $5 billion a year, even at December 2006 adoption rates. It will climb higher in years to come as broadband penetration increases.
For comparison this is almost half of the recording industry's revenues from 2006. And this would be essentially all profit. For this kind of gift (if they could get it) the public should demand the sky in freedom to do whatever it likes with the recording industry's products. Even a $1 fee would likely more than double its annual profits.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
seriously though I would love to see how much $ the industry spent on lawsuits vs. sales losses (that arent accurate anyways since it doesn't account for crap music, boycotting and poor judgement and marketing) since there has been nearly zero $ ever recovered from p2p lawsuits since... well people that don't have the $ to buy a britney cd in the first place won't have the $ to pay judgements or settlements. Personally, I am tired of this zero-evidence notion that file sharing will kill the industry. Every time we have heard this line in the past (for video cassettes, cassette tapes, CD-R, etc.), it has been proven false. Let's try it and find out. Once the real evidence is in, then I will be interested in discussing responses. the funny thing is that this will never happen since "piracy" is such a catch all claim for the industry- all of the propaganda can be directly funneled into it. People are boycotting> piracy, slow sales> piracy, poor marketing> piracy, bad economy> piracy - most average consumers do not have the economic knowledg to understand the ebb and flow of consumables to understand that there are other factors that go into PNL reporting and will just buy into it....