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Collective Licensing for Web-Based Music Distribution
Two weeks ago we discussed a proposal from music industry veteran Jim Griffin to implement a monthly fee from ISPs in exchange for the legal distribution of copyrighted music. Now, quinthar brings news that Warner Music Group has hired Griffin with the intention to make that proposal a reality. Warner wants Griffin to establish a collective licensing deal with ISPs that would let the ISPs stop worrying about their legal responsibilities for file-sharing while contributing to a pool of money (potentially up to $20 billion per year) that would be distributed amongst the music industry.
"Griffin says that in just the few weeks since Warner began working on this plan, the company has been approached by internet service providers 'who want to discharge their risk.' Eventually, advertising could subsidize the entire system, so that users who don't want to receive ads could pay the fee, and those who don't mind advertising wouldn't pay a dime. 'I.S.P.'s want to distinguish themselves with marketing," Griffin says. "You can only imagine that an I.S.P. that marketed a 'fair trade' network connection would see a marketing advantage.'"
You must be from England. There's no flat tax to pay for TV programming here in the U.S. ... most television programs are advertiser-supported, except those that are produced by cable outfits like HBO and Showtime.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The money you pay for cable/satellite TV is almost entirely to support the infrastructure, not the actual television studios, whereas the money you pay for a DVD box set goes back to the studio. However, when you pay for that TV service, you are doing so because you intend to watch television; hence, the studios do get a certain cut of revenue from that paid service. When you pay for internet service, you may intend to listen to music through it, but that is hardly the only (or primary) reason that people get internet service.
The only way I can see a system like this working is if the ISPs and media companies all become a single entity. Hence, you will pay that $250/mo for unlimited* access to television, radio, music, movies, etc delivered through your internet connection.
* Let's not be naive.. such a theoretical monopoly would result in severe limits on what you could get for such a "low" price. They'd probably restrict you to 1GB/mo of "media" traffic unless you upgrade to the $5000/mo plan.
The pirate still could be sued under these terms, and legal users are in effect being charged twice.
Thats what I thought at first, the RIAA would be penalizing people who aren't pirates.
but... from the article..
a controversial plan to bundle a monthly fee into consumers' internet-service bills for unlimited access to music.
Warner's plan would have consumers pay an additional fee--maybe $5 a month--bundled into their monthly internet-access bill in exchange for the right to freely download, upload, copy, and share music without restrictions.
It seems like in exchange for this monthly fee you get access to legal downloads. The idea is hopefully to try to use advertising to pay for it, giving users the option to pay a fee for non-ad music.
I'm sure it'll be low quality mp3s but its a start.
The fee is going to be variable depending on where you live (so Brits will end up paying the US rate * 3 or something).
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
So, not to be ad hominem, but lets use your own analogy.
The difference here is between choosing to go to Disneyland (and pay it or not), and being forced to pay for Disneyland. It's not a question of where the money goes, its whether you have the choice of how to spend it. The system doesn't work because the cost will be passed to the consumer, not the ones tossing aside their liability. Additionally, what does this do for non-label artists? There are issues on both sides of the table and why this doesn't work.
Or analogy two: Your choice to buy the swiss army knife or not, are you saying that you should just pay the fee for it, or you can choose to buy it? That is the bigger deal here. It's not where the magic marketing numbers are (which are shown that most people don't click advertising)
I hate to say it, but I would be seriously offended by a "pay for being a criminal" type subscription charge for the reasons above, what it implies, and all it is doing is degrading service. I really hate to support big business but by increasing the cost for the same service that is the same thing as degrading it due to lack of efficiency. Sometimes this happens naturally but artificially like this is just lining MPAA/RIAA/IFPI pockets at the simultaneous expense of every consumer who is legitimately or not using a service.
May as well just label it a "profit charge" and put that into your service bill for anything...except for the reality of just how much backlash that would create. Or maybe they'll try to get it passed by calling it "opt-out" or some garbage.
There are plenty of articles out there about ad revenue, associating things like "just because you watch TV" = money in a media associates pocket are unaccurate as far as ad revenue. Unless someone explicitly provides you a way to track a sale back to a TV ad, you can't really associate a sales increase from strictly an ad (especially if there is more than 1 source of adds, and even with fairly stable business). Reason here is that markets are volatile, and sales is just as volatile. People can change on the drop of a hat, because the sky is blue today, etc in the same way that a stock does. http://techdirt.com/articles/20060504/1941211.shtml provides a decent example of that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_Runner_(ISP)
Great idea!
The entire music industry gross revenues are about $14 billion. So what we'll do is hand the RIAA $20 billion pure profit for sitting back and not doing any work in particular on top of them continuing to collecting most of the $14 billion they get now minus whatever speculative amount legal P2P might actually diminish those $14 billion revenues.
I'm glad to see we've finally found a fair solution.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.