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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.'"
So now instead of me having the choice of walking into a store and buying a CD I'm forced to?
Who says that just because I use the Internet I ever listen to your music?
Get out of my fucking wallet!
Lord knows everyone here will figure out a way to get rid of them and still get all the free stuff they want.
They aren't quite clear about what you get for that fee. On the one hand, they talk about "access to a database of all music", but then they talk about freeing the ISPs from liability. This might well mean that for your fee, the only thing you can legally do is "access" music in Windows-only formats from an unreliable and poorly maintained RIAA server, whose notion of "all music" is limited to top-20 stuff.
In any case, any proposal like this should have a clear and well-defined path in it towards dismantling the RIAA and making its members obsolete; a world in which music can be shared and distributed freely does not require record companies in the traditional sense. The only thing these people still can hold on to should be the old copyrights they managed to obtain from less lucky artists.
This is quite possibly the worst idea the record companies have ever come up with. I would be very surprised if any ISPs ever give in. I can see it now:
Monthly internet bill:
50.00 - connection fee
5.00 - music extortion fee
5.50 - movies extortion fee
8.25 - television extortion fee
3.00 - print media extortion fee
4.00 - software warez extortion fee
2.00 - images possibly out of copyright
4.00 - independent music fee
3.00 - documentaries fee
2.50 - guitar tabs/sheet music
3.00 - song lyrics
2.00 - spambot fee (just in case I'm a node)
7.00 - fee for everyone else wanting my pound of flesh
total: $100 per month, and I think I'm being quite generous
Where will this stop? If the record labels get their fee, I want my fee for everyone that downloaded that one picture from my blog that I told you that you shouldn't save but you did anyways. You can just send me those $.02 per subscriber per month, or I'll take a flat fee of $3,000,000 - thanks.
But why should people who are not accessing the content or paying for the content through something like iTunes have to pay any kind of tax?
In my mind this is no better than extorting ISPs.
Why not address the problem by capping upload limits from customers? I remember my ISP taking people down for hosting websites on their home computer. I can't see that being different.
Oops, how did this get here?
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This stinks like the CD-R tax in canada except that now EVERYONE must pay a surcharge. What a bunch of crap.
Tolerance does not tolerate intolerance, or hypocrisy.
Seriously, this is so exponentially insane the first thing I thought of was SCO.
- "The company has been approached by internet service providers 'who want to discharge their risk.'" Fuckin' bullshit. Total horseshit. Lies, lies, lies. Classic smokescreen to try to create some kind of peer pressure. There is no risk. There are no such ISPs. That's why they must go nameless.
- What ISP would open themselves to this kind of blackmail? Wouldn't that be an obvious signal to the movie industry, the book publishing industry, the software industry, "come get in line and bilk us for money, we're weak and easily intimidated"?
- "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." What the fuck? How do those ads get on my system from the ISP? Across Firefox? Through my email? In my WOW packets? Take over my OS? WTF is that?
This guy should be in protective custody, under observation for a few weeks. He's clearly lost his grip on reality and must be a danger to himself. But then, that didn't stop SCO.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
That's not what it is, it's a fee to free the ISP's from the legal responsibilities of their services being used for piracy. The pirate still could be sued under these terms, and legal users are in effect being charged twice.
I'd be much less repulsed by this idea if I had any belief that the fees would be distributed in a fair fashion. As someone who listens to a fair deal of indie stuff (and virtually no major label stuff), I'm concerned that there's no way in hell anyone not on a major label would get to see a dime of the money. (Not that anyone ON a major label will see a dime of the money either, what with the soul-stealing contracts they make bands sign).
Ultimately then, it becomes about subsidizing an industry in a manner that provides absolutely no incentive for any major label to make desirable music. They can produce whatever they want and take the flat fee, preventing us from voting with our wallet. As a result, music would become even more controlled by the major labels than it already is now. And that's a particularly disgusting thought.
The laws of probability forbid it!
Just what risks do ISPs have for the file sharing by their customers?
THe last I heard, ISPs have a safe harbor as long as they just act as a conduit.
As such, any ISP that worries about their liabilities for the issue are wasting their time on nothing. To the best of my knowledge, there are no risks for the ISPs.
Even if this idea wasn't insane, the problem still lies in how the money would be distributed amongst the "music industry". I don't listen to mainstream tunes very often. I don't want my money going there.
Okay, I was afraid of making that mistake; (and actually I'm from France, where the tax exists).
Still, here I don't see people complaining about that flat fee just because they don't watch all channels, or because they don't watch them all the time. And of course that's in part because that tax is pretty low, just as the music fee could be (for example, if it was the avarage money spent spent by customer on music per month, or even better, the avarage actually given to artist; plus probably some money for marketing).
Maybe a better example would be Disneyland: you pay to enter, and that pays for the haunted mansion, even if you never go there.
Or a second example: buying a swiss army knife with a can openner, even if you never use it. Of course from your point of veiw it would be logical not to get a can openner, but as a global system it is more economic to "force" everyone to get the can opener, so that price get lower by volume.
Of course this doesn't solve the problem of deciding what artist gets what amount of that money, but it still is a system that economicaly makes sense; charging 99cents on itune for every song does not.
Don't take my posts literally; it's just code to control my botnet.
So ... what are the ISPs paying for, if they aren't the ones being sued and they aren't the ones sharing the music?
I can see it like through a crystal ball ... the first user of one of these ISPs who gets sued, their lawyer is going to demand an accounting of all the ISP fees - and since the user is paying the fee (indirectly), the user is entitled to the benefit of indemnification.
If my ISP charges me for music that I am NOT downloading I promise I will steal every album known to man 1000 times. I mean make 1000 copies of every album known to man.......
All points of time and space are connected.
I'd gladly pay an extra few bucks a month for my internet if it means I have carte blanche to torrent as much music as I want without having to worry about getting sued (and if it means my ISP would stop throttling my bandwidth - I'm sick of having to reset my modem every other day.)
An object at rest cannot be stopped.
After careful consideration, sir, I've come to the conclusion that your system sucks.
Did anyone else fall over laughing at that "$20bn a year" bit? How'd they arrive at that carefully calculated number: "gee, i'd sure like 20 billyun dollarz lol." Honestly, if the major ISPs have any brains left at all (debatable, i realize), i don't see them going for this. "Hey can you be the bad guys, charge your customers more, sell them on it, and pass most of the profits on to us? Kthxbye."
I expect the RIAA and their ilk are just going to get weirder and more invasive like this as time goes on, especially if they perceive their powers fading. They say they love a free market, but they love a captive audience more.
That which does not kill us makes us... st
We in the business like to call this a "protection racket".
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
And what about the deaf, will they have to pay this tax, err, I mean, collective licensing?
How we know is more important than what we know.
I thought the plan was to gather a monthly fee, and in exchange we do whatever the fuck we want, and the industry pisses off to count their money.
Whats this advertisement supported stuff? How are you going to feed ads into my p2p app, or download of choice? The only scheme I could think of is one where they force me to watch ads, and if I don't watch enough, I get a bill.
What this is, is charging everybody for a service nobody wants. This is akin to Comcast dumping some dipshit golf channel into basic cable, and charging everybody for it. In fact, that's exactly what it is. A dumbass online "music channel" I don't want, and I surely don't want to pay for.
I want to know which ISPs aren't going to pony up to this new extortion racket, so I can recommend them and switch if needed.
No, they still don't get it, not even close.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
This is a fucking shakedown. The MAFIAA is shaking down the ISPs for a percent of the money they earn by providing me with internet service. I do not do file-sharing that involves unlicensed music in any way. So of course the MAFIAA does not deserve to receive any of my hard earned money. What. The. Fuck. Are. They. Injecting. Into. Their. Veins.
What about all the independent musicians? Do you think they will get a share in this tax?
Remember, this isn't collecting royalties, this is the traditional and dying music industry looking for free money.
Why not tax electricity for the RIAA? After all, we all know music pirates have to use electricity to make illegal copies,
therefore all users of electricity must be music pirates! (This is the kind of logic we're talking about here)..
This blanket tax thing is an incredibly bad idea.
Ask Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead how they feel about such a tax, after showing they can make far more money without the "help" of a corrupt and bloated music industry.
Bavarian Purity Law of Rice Krispie Squares: Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter, Vanilla.
Right on AC.
Seriously, I don't see why everyone's got such a hard-on for protecting the music industry. Maybe we're obsessed with this idea of the small musician being able to make it big, maybe we just like the sound of a corporation making money, but seriously, guys, SERIOUSLY.
CUT THIS SHIT OUT. I'm sick and fucking tired of people defending the damn RIAA while they continue to make off with money they didn't earn. Did they compose the song? Is it part of their soul? A creation of their own? No! They sit there and exploit their artists so they can exploit their consumers. It cheapens the value of art, it destroys the beauty of sound, and it fucks us all over in a giant corporatist blood orgy.
Why is it corporatist? The entire legal backing behind a record distribution company- the idea of COPYRIGHT, is a law intended to CREATE a market for something unmarketable. Why can the music industry continue to use old, outdated media (CDs, record stores) when there is a BETTER media around? (FLAC, the internet)
Because we are CORPORATISTS. We feel like we have the right nay the OBLIGATION to protect something someone made up in their heads. Fuck that shit. Music is meant to be enjoyed, not exploited.
Seriously, FUCK that shit.
+5, Truth
This is the most retarded business idea I have ever seen.
How is it decided who gets the money, what are we paying for?
This is just another way of passing the costs on to us, however this time we don't get a valuable product in return, and there is no incentive to produce. This will inevitably cripple the music industry more than file sharing could ever do, and it will hurt the ISP industry as well (Unless it's voluntary, in which case it won't last long, since there are significant economic incentives to not do it).
I can't believe someone even considered this.
No legitimate business would ever consider this, only Government would consider a revenue stream like this.
This is pissing me off heaps right now, and I haven't even read the article. I hope this is another one of those "Slashdot went crazy and badly worded the article" moments.
Someone needs to smack them over the head with the wealth of nations followed by free to choose.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
what if I've already bought your crap and don't want to pay for it again? (I own ~1000 CDs I've bought each one, I don't download music but I use the internet heavily, why should I pay a tax like this?)
Maybe a better example would be you walk into a shopping mall, but you don't buy anything, but just because you walked into the mall you have to pay for it just in case you stole something, however if you do want to buy something, then you need to pay again.
That's a more accurate description of what is happening.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
ISP's are already protected by their Common Carrier status.
There's a reason for this - and it's because the ISP's cannot easily monitor traffic that flows across its network. It's the same way the postal service couldn't easily read the letters of all the mail it delivers.
Wouldn't it be easier setting up a website similar to Amazon where people can pay $X/month for "all they can download" DRM-free music?
Everytime a song/album is downloaded the system keeps track of it, and at the end of the month the artist gets paid for the number of times their music has been downloaded?
You could even allow for independant artists to upload and distribute their music through your network.
But what if I dont want to download their crap?
Do I still need to pay?
How dare you be logical.
Such an idea couldn't possibly work! Someone could pay the $X, download our entire collection and share it all on bittorrent for everyone else!!
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TBH, I think that's a great idea - I havn't downloaded a single mp3 in over 3 years (sorry, but nothing good has come out recently - yes that's how bad your music is, I won't even go to the effort of downloading it for free). Making me pay $x per month on my ISP bill would be wrong - unless you were giving it to the porn industry.
However, if you made a site with a monthly subscription that let you download limitless or X per month songs (be reasonable about it - remember you have to compete with free) and made it easy to search/use with no DRM. People will generally prefer to use such a site as it'll be faster and easier then most of the other methods of downloading such files.
How is this different from the "protection money" Big Fat Paulie wants me to pay in return for not lighting my shop on fire? I get free music in return? Well Paulie said that I'm protected from the other criminals in return.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
You play the Devil's advocate well. I will bite.
The problem is: information is not a "good" or a "product". It is not a "thing". So, it cannot be analysed in the same manner as physical objects. Lessig's picnic table example is perfect for this. If I take your picnic table from your back yard, I am stealing. If I see you have a picnic table, like the idea, and go and buy one for my yard, what have I "stolen" then? I certainly got the idea from you, but I also have not taken anything from you.
It is only valuable if artists truly have an alternative. Before the internet, there really was none. It is entirely possible that this sort of blanket taxing on ISPs will return artists to the former situation -- just as with net radio where SoundExchange requires royalties to be collected for all songs regardless of whether the artist is a member or not. This sort of monopoly is unfair to both artists and "consumers" as it denies both the opportunity to exercise their Free Choice.
This does not mean that internet style distribution should not be used. Phone services are now all packet switched, but most people have no idea. The same could be done with radio. Radio is supposed to go digital. Why not have radio stations stream MP3s or other cacheable data instead of whatever format they use? Why not have car radios that load streams off the internet when they are near wifi hotspots? Why does the radio user have to have any idea about the underlying architecture?
Correction: The artist is entitled initially to any money generated by the work they create. If they artist wants to "keep" his work, he can keep his work a secret. If he is going to give it to the public, it will no longer be exclusively his -- it will be a part of our culture.
If the ISPs start going for this proposal, no one will have a choice: Connecting to the internet will be "buying from them".
Correct enough. However, this "outdated business model" is the cause of copyright violating other more important rights like Free Speech. The increases in the scope and duration of copyright over the last century alone are reason enough to violate it. Following unreasonable laws helps to support arbitrary laws and dictatorial government administration. It is the responsibility of citizens in any Free Society to both question and refuse to obey unreasonable laws. Before the internet, copyright did not conflict significantly with the First Amendment. Now it does.
Are you doing your part? Or are you making it easier for governments and corporations to violate our rights in new and innovative ways?
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
* Which is not anyone with a vested interest in copyright, and they certainly don't pay to spread my opinions (just to head off those trigger-happy witch-hunters who accuse anyone with a contrary opinion of being an RIAA-shill).Fair enough. It's really a matter of opinion and you are entitled to your own. However, I'd like to explain why my opinion is different.
Basically, physical property is already a theoretical concept independent from tangible objects. You may own that kilogram of potatoes, but there is nothing physical in your ownership. If someone steals your potatoes, they don't instantly own them; you still do (you just no longer have possession of them). Just because it's easy to take property doesn't mean that we should align ownership with possession. That would destroy the point of property and negate the vast positives of defining property. It would also be cheaper in terms of enforcement and chances for civil system abuses (ala RIAA lawsuits) to ignore property, but we have decided that those costs are vastly outweighed by the benefits. If as many people were to commit physical theft as people currently commit copyright infringement, I would bet my bottom dollar there would be moves to abolish physical property to be in synch with the fickle nature of possession.
IP is relatively new, and difficult to enforce. Therefore it is not currently as entrenched in our morality, and a community of infringers has been allowed to form in the absence of adequate enforcement. IP could reflect society if society started to support IP law, like we did with the concept of property, and like physical property, we could benefit from it's addition to property law. The current abnormally high rate of abuse once it's refined and enforced properly, like physical property is. To quote the old propaganda "You wouldn't steal a car..."So it's not copyright they're complaining about, it's the RIAA, or more specifically, the exploitations by the RIAA of certain holes in the legal system that allows them to demand "protection money". And instead of campaigning to plug those holes, or even call for the RIAA's head on a pike, they've decided to go for copyright, a system that is actually beneficial.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
What about software developers, movie makers, authors of books, magazines and newspaper articles, photographers, web page authors including bloggers, etc? Don't they deserve a share of the cash too?
If you don't make the payments on your IP, it cannot be repossessed. If I have a good memory, I can keep your IP in my head - will you have the courts compel brain surgery against infringers to recover the stolen property? How much is your IP worth? If you make 1 million copies of your $0.99 song, do we tax your IP at a high rate, because you are now worth almost a million dollars?
On the other hand, what about real, tangible property? Can we treat it similar to IP? If it's been 70 years after the death of the builder, can everyone come live in that house? Once that sack of potatoes is in the public domain, can we make potatoes au gratin, even though the original owner made mashed potatoes?
I'm really disgusted with the ludicrous idea that IP should be treated the same as tangible property. It's not the same, and can never be treated the same. You speak of some crazy IP law as something that should be "entrenched in our morality". As long as people have independent thought, that is impossible, because when sharing an idea becomes morally repugnant, we will no longer be human.
I wouldn't steal a car, but if I could give a car to someone that didn't have one simply by pulling it out of my ass at no cost to me, that seems like a really "moral" thing to do. Telling me it's wrong because [Big Corporation] should get something because *I* made a copy of a car just doesn't *feel* right.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The insane part here is that ISPs have some sort of "legal responsibility for file-sharing" in the first place.
My ISP provides a connection to the internet for me. They don't force me to use some damned AOL-like portal. I run my own servers (web/mail) so I don't have to connect to their mail service to gather my email. So... where are all these advertisements that are intended to subsidize the music industry supposed to be coming from? I can't see how I'd even be seeing them. Yet I'm possibly going to have to pay to avoid seeing them.
Yet another proposal for dipping into my wallet coming from an industry that still has no idea how the Internet is supposed to work. I'm having trouble figuring out who further from understanding this: the RIAA or Ted Stevens.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Every time the entertainment industry comes up with another idea designed to force the money-spigot wide open, it reeks of the desperation of a junky trying to get one last hit.
These bastards have sat on their asses for over fifty years, reaming artists and raping customers and enjoying tons of cash.
Those days are over, but the junkies can't conceive of a world in which they don't get their easy fix.
It's repugnant.
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen