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Warner Music Pushing Music Tax For Universities
An anonymous reader writes "Warner Music is pitching the idea of a 'music tax' for various top universities. The idea is that students would be free to file share, but the university needs to monitor and track everything, create a pool of money, hand it over to a recording industry entity that promises to distribute the proceeds fairly. In exchange, the university gets a 'covenant not to sue' from the music labels. It's not a full license, just a basic promise that they won't sue. It's also claimed that this is 'voluntary' but the Warner Music guy says that they need to include all universities and all ISPs to really make it work. It's basically a music tax, where the recording industry gets to sit back and collect money."
I'll allow it only if I can sign up as an indie artists and get some of the money, too.
(read: this is ludicrous and will never happen)
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Fuck the MPAA
Ya see...ya just pay us a little somethin' each week and nothin' bad'll happen to ya. It's extortion and I imagine lots of universities will sign up in hopes they won't get sued. And they won't, as long as they pay the yearly protection money. The worst part is that even after the music business finally goes out of business from their horrific management, these protection scams will remain viable assets for legal firms to purchase and manage.
I hate these people. They're already getting a chunk of change from blank disc sales, and now they want Universities to hand over millions of dollars with the (ahem) "promise" that it will be fairly distributed. And it will ... amongst various record company executives and their cronies. Oh, and we probably won't sue you, either. But no guarantees.
We need to stop taking them at their word when they say their going to give money to artists. They generally don't (unless the artist had a good lawyer, I suppose.) Actually, we need to stop taking them at their word.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I have a bunch of music that i have downloaded. Most of it I do not listen to as I have my favorites and thus would not want to pay for it. That said... it does make sense that if someone is going to enjoy the music then some sort of remuneration should follow. Perhaps the balance is... just how much per track?
Now that the cost of higher education is falling and endowments are growing, universities will have lots of money to spend on music taxes!
Alternatively, they could just give every student a free copy of PeerGuardian.
What they are afraid of is the growing momentum against the RIAA at the university administration level. This is a weak and desperate attempt, a grasping at far away sticks by an arm who's body is quickly sinking below the quick sand surface.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I would be willing to pay a monthly "download insurance" fee in exchange for immunity from prosecution for downloading to my heart's content. Music, Movies, Games, Software, set up a separate fund for each and let folks opt-in.
Seriously. They know this isn't going to fly. The Universities and ISPs know it's not going to fly. This whole ridiculous thing looks an awful lot like the sort of gesture you see followed by 'we tried to play nice, but...'
I doubt that anything like this will work now though, they should have done this in 1997. It's pretty hard to compete with free.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
Sounds like a desperate act to try and keep making money off the very demographic that has been getting their music for free for many years now - which I don't see changing
is immoral, unethical, or against the beliefs of some religion.
Make it illegal.
But its going to happen anyway.
so
Tax it.
????
Profit
What happens when you graduate and later get busted p2p'ing and then they find your stash from the college days?
the kicker for me is the "a recording industry entity" part.
there's been plenty of articles and such (even on /.) about how recording industry entities for distributing royalties is...well....distributing to themselves and not to the artists.
What was that organization that the RIAA made....SonicExchange? or SoundExchange? whatever it was...it wasn't distributing funds to where it was truly due.
Even if they change it to be an independent, non-profit collection organization/entity, I still won't bite.
What about privacy issues?
What about misuse/abuse by the authorities?
Is there an opt-out clause?
A "covenant" isn't as binding as I would like.
The RIAA and the automotive industry is starting to look like they are using same guiding principle....continue to use a failing business model in favor of short term profits but long term losses and ask for a bailout while they don't actually do any work.
the universities lawyers fight the labels hard and keep draining them of money. At the same time, the indie world needs to create easier access to BOUGHT AND PAID FOR music. IOW, make it possible for the artists to make more money by getting rid of the blood and money sucking labels.
Just thinking about, I can not see much difference between the labels or the detroit 3. All have had greedy management that is worthless.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You and your fellow record labels are dying dinosaurs. Someday, people will dig up your bones and declare that you used to rule the world. And then it all came to a sudden, catastrophic end. All caused by a comet called the Internet.
Goodbye, so long, and thanks for all the fish.
M.
"That's a nice university you have there -- shame if anything were to happen to it..."
The Italians have a word for it -- Pizzo -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzo_(extortion)
Ian Ameline
I'm one of the minority on Slashdot who actually thinks that file sharers who trade in thousands of dollars of goods deserve to be charged (criminally) as thieves, and even I have to say "fuck you" on this. If they do this, I'll have no problem ripping every DVD and CD that was made by Warner and giving copies to every friend and family member that wants them.
Tax me and spy on me to preserve your business model? That's going way too far and enough to make me say it's time to let slip the dogs of war on them.
It's real simple. The RIAA can see that it will soon be common place for Law Students to fight for the victims of the music industry's suits. They are looking to replace that lucrative revenue stream.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
As a career college student, I've seen many new fees introduced over the years that simply weren't there before. The curriculum hasn't changed enough to warrant the fees. If the price is right, I bet lots of universities would be more than happy to pass the fee along to students with a nice helping of obfuscation.
This will go great with the current economic disaster and out of control college tuition rates. Good thing the current Congress isn't influenced by the music industry. Oh wait...
"Nice college you have here - It would be a shame if something bad should happen here..."
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
...with all this detailed, logged and tracked information on our over-priced and bloated money laundering scheme!
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
I'm reminded of the Windows strategy...
Convince the manufacturer to pay for and install Windows - the manufacturer charges customers for Windows who would otherwise never use it - customers figure "I paid for it, why not use it?"
Convince the college to pay for unlimited access to the music - the college collects money from students who would otherwise never download the music - students figure "I paid for it, why not download it!"
Does M$ not have a patent on this business model?:P
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...
Umm, so the record industry doesn't actually make it legal for the students to share the music, they just require their cut and they promise not to sue.
I hope someone more qualified than myself takes this up because they are trying to extort money from the universities in what appears to me to be a very literal definition of the term.
The mob use a business model similar to this. Make people pay them money or they cost you far more in damages. Worked really well for the mob, not so great for the people they extorted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion "Making a threat of violence or a lawsuit which refers to a requirement of a payment of money or property to halt future violence or lawsuit is sufficient to commit the offense."
What happens to the file-swapper after they graduate? Their identity is compromised, their activities documented, and they would be ripe for a lawsuit after graduation, no?
Why not allow service providers to perform this service and actually grant a license? I have unfettered access to ruckus.com through my university e-mail, and that works just fine more me.
Only it's called "Paying protection money," and it is illegal.
but I'd rather have universities host a music service for their students. I live in Canada so I'm immune to the RIAA (for now, the equivalent Canadian entity make come to bite us soon enough), but I wouldn't mind an extra $100 fee on top of tuition for unlimited access to legal 256kbps+ DRM free music. That comes out to be $25/month, which is less than what I pay for music per month anyway.
Seriously...why don't they just sell music online for *reasonable* prices, and screwing around with licenses/DRM. Standard copyright issues would apply (i.e., if you want to make money off someone else's work, you need to cut a deal with the copyright owner), but otherwise, just make it really easy and cheap to buy music.
If they could just do that, I'd actually be buying music - right now I only bother with stuff I can download (legally) for free. Buying mainstream music online these days is generally expensive and/or involves too much hassle/DRM - and the music isn't convincing enough for me to go through all that. I guess I'm just too poor and lazy.
I took a look at the slides on the full story. This ought to be good for a chuckle. One of the stated goals of the program is to "Avoid technological requirements that might impact our networks or hinder innovation." Isn't that nice, an industry which has crusaded against the Internet suddenly taking an interest in our connection speeds?
How do they propose to accomplish this? Lotsa fun ways:
"* Institutions make a reasonable effort to estimate the number of downloads per song
o Might monitor traffic through a cache"
Hold the phone. What about not impeding technology? It gets better, gang.
"o Determined by the campus
o Experimentation encouraged"
Doesn't that sound like a fun way to lose your geek card -- shilling for Warner Media Group? I thought so.
Last comment from me, on the remarks from WMG slide: "* We've started a non-profit company to be clear we intend to operate with good intentions and not profit as a motive." He also has a bridge to sell us.
Not a Jew
I had a conference call with Warner today about this very subject.
This is a good thing. This is just what the EFF wanted:
http://www.eff.org/wp/better-way-forward-voluntary-collective-licensing-music-file-sharing
Now we have a chance to make this a reality, and you guys are shooting it down?
This "music tax" is a fair way for artists and distributors to get paid while letting people listen and share music however they want. No DRM. You get to keep the music after you leave the university. Use any file sharing network you want.
It would only cost $2 to $10 a month (still in the works, they want our input)... what more do you guys want? This is a huge improvement over the current choice of DRM vs. a lawsuit.
Warner wants to work with the Universities to help implement this... I spoke with them directly this morning, and I really believe Warner is trying to do good with this system. Please, let us give them a chance to do something right. This isn't just Warner pressing some evil tax on the Universities, it is just a pilot to let file sharing thrive without limitations.
I hope this program succeeds, I truly do.
Any sensible person would see this as extortion.
The last time somebody did a full-scale audit on one of the record companies, they found that they'd underpaid royalties to over 90% of the artists under contract to them. The idea that this pack of thieves could be trusted within a hundred miles of anybody's money is ludicrous.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
.
I think Warner's odd choice of words might have something to do with the fact that the RIAA has consistently refused to even consider seriously a flat ISP tax system. I just wonder if calling it a "covenant not to sue" will be a two-way street, and by not just calling it a license, Warner may just make it too unappealing and uncertain of an arrangement for universities.
Time for the colonies to revolt
only blank "music" CD-R's, data discs do not have the levy on them.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Yes, they specifically said indie artists and labels could sign-on for this and get paid.
Should be able to draft an epic "get bent" letter in response to this proposal.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Not unlike the blank tape tax of the 80's.
I laugh at the whole debate. When you stop investing in crafting the artists of tomorrow and instead center your model around being a distribution machine, don't be shocked when the internet figures out a better way to distribute your property.
Music labels are dead. They don't control the artists. They don't control access to the masses. They have no traits that would let them survive in the future.
[For the youngsters reading this, yes, there was a blank tape tax that the music industry was able to get passed that did the same thing on cassette tapes. Cassette tapes were after 8-tracks and before CD's. The were around vinyl, but you could play them in your car.]
Back in the United States, a new report shows college tuition is becoming increasingly unaffordable for most Americans. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education says college tuition and fees have increased by 439 percent since 1982. The cost of attending a four-year public university now amounts to 28 percent of the median family income, while a four-year private university would account for 76 percent. The Centerâ(TM)s president, Patrick Callan, said, âoeIf we go on this way for another twenty-five years, we wonâ(TM)t have an affordable system of higher education.â
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Can the uni's not band together and sue Warners into the ground and wipe them out?
The uni's have a guaranteed eternal revenue stream - Warners et al are on borrowed time and haemmoraging slowly to death.
Finally they will let us share the music however we want, how much we want. No DRM, no worries of lawsuits or copyright infringement...
I hated the RIAA when they were suing people and putting DRM on everything. Now they want to stop that.. I say it's about time!
They say they "promise to distribute the proceeds fairly", but they haven't been doing that with royalties from other digital sources (the Youtube deal etc). Why should we give them more?
This collective licensing scheme could create an option to get paid WITHOUT labels. indie artists and labels could get part of the pool. I know this, because I spoke with Warner this morning since we *approached them* because we are very interested in this proposal.
"Nice university you got there. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it."
I agree that those file sharers of commercial material should be fined and maybe a low level misdemeanor around that of a parking ticket.
However, I am opposed to this on the principle that these producers of horrible music shall not get a cent of my money! MILLIONS FOR LAWYERS, BUT NOT A CENT FOR PRODUCERS OF CRAPPY MUSIC!
I needs to get me some free musik, two! [sic]
hey, since they are proposing that college kids get a free ride on pirating, hey, I want in on that, too! but I'm not in school anymore ;( maybe its ok that I can do a disk copy of their 'legal' mp3's? do you think that would be ok? I won't tell anyone, I promise. scouts honor.
getting serious - this is absurd that anyone would even consider 'hush money' at the university level.
a new low in the mafiaa's tactics.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I have to say this sounds a lot to me like a person who is very frugal going out to dinner with a bunch of other people who order extravagant food options and then having someone want to split the bill at the end.
I mostly don't listen to music. $2 to $10 per month is $25-$125/yr or $100-$500 over the course of a four year college. That's about $90 to $490 more than I would have paid if buying a la carte every piece of music I wanted to buy. That's money I could have spent on things that matter to me.
Will you be as excited about anteing up $2 to $10 per month to cover some routine cost that I pay for and that bores you to tears, just to bring my price down?
To employ a musical reference, does the phrase "tyrrany of the majority" ring any bells?
Tell me why it isn't just fair that people should pay for what they use?
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
The DMCA already has a "Safe Harbor" clause. So... the RIAA is only promising to not sue Universities that capitulate, when the law already explicitly says they have no case? Or, did they mean they won't sue the students? (But would require spying on them, which would seem to be a violation of FERPA.)
Even if it were a blanket license to share (which isn't clear in the summary or TFA), that would only seem to help the universities not have to deal with as many DMCA requests -- but they still have to deal with a lot more record-keeping and money-shuffling.
For students, it would seem to be nice to have the option of getting a blanket license (or get-out-of-DMCA-free card); but as many have entertainment budgets in the single-$/week range, that might not be what most would want. (And... just how much does this cost, anyway? cheaper than 1 CD/month for each student? I doubt it...)
and when did they get the arrogance to dictate Tax policy? BTW instead of "sharing" music, isn't it easier to just go to a site like www.tagoo.ru and get it for free?
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
Yes I smell the Jew are behind this. Remind you, They controlled most **AA members.
They already doing it on our food. It is called Kosher Tax.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1998729296709842517
The Kosher Food Tax is a fraud on the American consumer. Take a look at the items in your cupboard and you'll find either the (U) or (K) labels on almost every one of them. These symbols represent a Jewish "blessing", which means that you have unwittingly paid a tax to a Jewish religious group. These symbols could be anywhere on the package, so look carefully.
The circled "U," sometimes with the word "Parve", stands for Union of Orthodox Jews (UOJCA), the "K" stands for Kosher (KOV K). These symbols mean that the product's producer paid the Jews a kind of "tax" to have some rabbi "bless" it. Don't confuse these letters with the letter "R" which stands for 'registered trade mark' or a letter "C" which stands for 'copyright'.
In 1959, the Wall Street Journal estimated this "tax" at about $20 million and it is thought to be in the hundreds of millions today. The Jewish Post of July 30, 1976 reported that Rabbi Harvey Sentor admitted that Kov K was a "profit-making concern." The UOJCA extracts exactly the same levy as Kov K.
This "tax" is not an option for the Gentile, he has to pay it to the Jews. If this was nothing more than a religious ceremony, giving rabbinical approval to food and food products prepared in a specific way, then why are steel wool and kitchen utensils also included?
Here is how the scheme works. An Orthodox Rabbi warns a company that unless their product is certified as Kosher they will face a boycott by every Jew in America. Once the company agrees, it must keep the amount paid a strict secret!
In 1960, 225 food products paid the Kosher tax, 476 in 1966, 1000 in 1974, and today 17,500 companies are paying this multi-level tax. Listed below are National Kosher Agencies and their symbols - you might want to give them a call to see what they say. Regional listings and their symbols will follow soon.
Kof-K Kosher Supervision
1444 Queen Anne Road
Teaneck, NJ 07666
201-837-0500
Fax: 201-837-0126
Rabbi Aharon Felder, Director of Kosher Standards
Rabbi Ari Moshe Senter, Halachic Research
Rabbi Dovid Senter, Rabbi Yehuda Rosenbaum,
Rabbi Daniel Senter, Administration
Rabbi Dr. H. Zecharia Senter, Executive Administrator
Publication: Kosher Outlook Supplement
The Organized Kashruth Laboratories
1372 Carroll Street
Brooklyn, NY 11213
718-756-7500
Fax: 718-756-7500
Rabbi Don Yoel Levy, Kashruth Administrator
Rabbi Leizer Teitelbaum, Rabbi Dovid Steigman,
Rabbi Chaim Fogelman, Rabbi Levi Garelik,
Rabbi Avraham Juravel, Rabbi Mendel Raitzes, Rabbinical Coordinators
Publication: The Jewish Homemaker
Star-K Kosher Certification
11 Warren Road
Baltimore, MD 21208-5234
410-484-4110
Fax: 410-653-9294
Rabbi Moshe Heinemann, Rabbinic Administrator
Dr. Avrom Pollak, President
Rabbi Eliyahu Shuman, Director of Supervision
Publication: Kashrus Kurrents
The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations
333 Seventh Avenue
New York, NY 10001
212-563-4000
Fax: 212-564-9058
Rabbi Menachem Genack, Rabbinic Administrator
Publications: the "OU" Kashrus Directory, Jewish Action, Mesorah Journal of Halacha, Daf Hakashrus
Sounds like a great idea as long as everyone is fair. You know the money goes to the artist. The system is not abused. There is a viable way to prove how much p2p goes on in the university. The music industry should also make all of their music available for easy downloading since that will get paid for in the end anyway.
Yep probably not going to happen.
And every time the recording industry proposes something like this, they can take a nice bath in in it.
Every single one of those fuckers needs to be put to death. They're wasting oxygen, fuel, and food the valuable parts of the species could be consuming.
This is not a good thing, and last fall I wrote an indignant letter to EFF about their advocacy.
Why? I refuse to give even a single nickel to these people. I hate their abuse of our legal system, I hate their despicable extortionate practices, I hate their lobbying for sweetheart legislation, I hate their hubris, and also I don't like the music they promote. I want their business model to die. I want to continue to boycott them. But this would compel me to help prop them up.
I don't care if the bill is $0.05 per month. I won't willingly pay it.
But as a graduate student---and I am doomed to remain one for the next several years---I would have little or no choice if the U decided to tack on this fee. I would try to raise a ruckus, but at the end of the day, the U holds so much more power over me, and I'm not willing to torch my career ambitions over this matter. The RIAA of course knows it. How can this therefore be called anything other than extortion, which civilized societies find reprehensible? It is NOT a good thing.
For heaven's sakes, as a university administrator, please DO NOT enact such a program unless students can easily opt out. In other words, if it isn't really a fee.
$META_SIG_JOKE
Since most artist were educated in some school somewhere, the music they create is a result of that education - so any profits should go back to the schools......gross not net.
lets just give all the music to the banks!! could be less of a puzzle than money was.
Should be able to draft an epic "get bent" letter in response to this proposal.
Or they could outsource the letter writing to some guys in Sweden.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
They're already getting a chunk of change from blank disc sales
That's what burns me every time I buy a spindle of discs for burning my home movies to DVD and data backups. I used to think it was OK until I read how much the Canadian Private Copying Collective wants to hike the rates. They want the rates to be 29 cents per CD-R, $50 per iPod with less than 10 GB memory and $10 for any SD card with more than 4GB memory, just to pull a few.
I just sent them an e-mail telling them to go fuck themselves (well a bit more polite than that.)
That money is supposed to go to SOCAN which distributes the money among artists but this bloated waste of office space (300 employees) requires over $34 million per year just to operate. They paid out over $180 million last year, probably most to the CBC.
If you treat customers like potential criminals, then that's what they will become. I used to go out of my way to buy the TV shows I watch and music I listen to. But if I'm paying levies on my blank media and to my college or my ISP punishing me for copies I'll never make, or based on the assumption that I'm going to torrent their shit, maybe I'll just do that then.
They're so close to stumbling across a subscription service model it's not funny.
Of course, ideally they'd hash out a model that doesn't assume that distribution and copying are hard to do, but it'd be a good start!
..we don't do this at all and the recording industry accepts its inevitable fate and dies.
They had their day. And in their day they ruled with an iron fist. Technology has stripped away the role of the record companies as the overseers and distributors of music. The days are numbered for lording over artists and radio stations, and is good as over in terms of printing and distributing music to record stores.
Record stores? The idea seems strange now even to me, a 39 year old who grew up listening to vinyl records and 8 tracks.
FAQs are evil.
With a little tweaking, it might just work!
Try this:
"The idea is that students would be free to file share. Music labels can sue and lose."
Works for me.
when will it stop.
how about, to make things fair, every time i listen to a badly produced song, the record label pays me for wasting my time.
We have enough of this torture! It is time to be FREE! Free from Jewish Plantation!
Given the amount of university network bandwidth that is used to support downloading, uploading, and sharing of music files. I feel it is only fair to tax the music industry to support the bandwidth used for these purposes at universities.
Without music file transfer, many universities would be able to dedicate valuable, costly bandwidth to supporting student education instead of serving as a conduit for the music industry's products.
After all, if someone took over a common area at a university to sell used goods, you would expect the university to demand that they pay rent.
Bullshit.
I wish congress would wake up and smell the bullshit.
They're using their grammar skills there.
How is this not extortion again?
but put a clause in the contract: the universities should pay for every distribution THAT THEY DETECT - i.e. they wouldn't have to pay for files that were shared through encrypted filesharing, but the students would still be off the hook HAHA!
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
RIAA inadvertently, or perhaps advertently, discovered that Mommies and Daddies of adult children attending expensive private schools will pay nearly any amount of money for protection if they think the alternative is a Bad Record that will keep little Janie from becoming a Doctor. So $3250, $7250, any damn amount of money, they'll gladly pay it.
You must have been living under a rock for half a decade to think that there is only commercial music.
I listen to music all day long ... and every single album is Creative Commons licensed, either from Jamendo (14,000 albums) or from Archive.org (300,000 recordings), so I will never exhaust those catalogues in my lifetime. What's more, the albums are vastly better and more diverse than the charts crap.
And your comparison with public services is irrelevant. Music is not a public service, it's entertainment, so my subsidizing someone else's choice of commercial entertainment is completely without basis.
Now we have a chance to make this a reality, and you guys are shooting it down?
You work for the university, but the /.'ers are shooting it down? Perhaps you meant to ask why we don't like it. I'll give you my reason:
Copyright infringement is illegal. If you are aware of it, you should block it. Period. Otherwise, you are a party to it and contributing to a crime. The RIAA does not represent all interested parties and they certainly will not be sharing the wealth. Next you'll be telling me it's okay to ignore the GPL because you send Eric Raymond a little extra cash each month. I don't care if Christ himself returns to put his stamp of approval on the plan, you're breaking the law if you do it. Don't like it? Change copyright law so that P2P is treated for what it really is: Free advertising. Otherwise, YOU are the criminal.
How would you like it if you were a musician, and I started bootlegging every single last piece of merchandise that you every produced and gave it away for free or at just cost? Your t-shirts, your stickers, your cds, everything. Oh, and I stood there recording every live performance in high quality HD and gave it away for free to anyone too lazy or cheap to go to your show?
I may not be denying you your music, but I sure as hell am cheating you out of any reasonable compensation for your work by creating conditions where no one has any incentive other than maybe the goodness of their heart toward a starving musician to give you any money.
How about I just take your latest source code and market it as my own? It's just a bunch of bits, I'm not denying you any rights by just walking away with your hard work and selling my own version of it. You still have your copy. Why should I be able to copy anything you own, but not be able to sell it?
I'm not misunderstanding the situation at all. I happen to be of the opinion that copyright is a real property right, and should be subjected to the same rights and regulations as physical property. That's why I have no problem with your state government charging you with grand theft if you pirate Adobe Creative Suite for shits and giggles.
What you clearly don't understand is that there are many sides to this issue, not just yours and theirs. There is nothing inconsistent between my position and opposing a blanket tax and surveillance policy which treats all students as potential criminals. That is absurd and unconstitutional in any scenario involving public universities, regardless of what the Supreme Court has ever ruled on similar issues.
"Nice students ya got there, i'd be a shame if something happen'd to em!"
Just raise my ISP price a dollar and provide me with a "covenant not to sue" in re: to music, films, software, or any other "copyrighted" content.
I'd pay the dollar for the privilege.
-Kinsey
Now we have it in writing, take them down...
Yes, yes, I know, they coded it in legalsleeze...
Yet it sounds just like "If'n yous don' wan' nuttin' tos happen' to yous, yous bezt pays up, capiche?"
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
I'm going to take part in protesting the RIAA's mafia tactics! Once upon a time, I might have considered buying some CDs and then burning them in a symbolic gesture of apathy, but with today's technology, I'm going to instead repeatedly download bunches of songs, just so that I can delete them!! Ha! Take that RIAA! Not only am I pirating your junk, but I'm trashing it too!
until copyright disappears. And it will disappear.
Hasn't worked in the past. Various governments around the world have passed tax laws mandating a percentage of blank CDs or cassettes get paid to RIAA/ARIA/etc -- and the buggers still keep whingeing, moaning and threatening home user over piracy while raking in the money that was meant to compensate them for it.
This time, governments need to extract a binding community license in exchange for this sort of tax. Given the reports of record companies ripping off their artists for millions, there's no way promises should be taken on trust.
This suspiciously looks like the a limited edition of the "Global Licence" scheme that the french parliament started to legalized when transcripting the EUCD into DADVSI, before the government (illegally) withdrew it from the bill text... At that time the culture minister said this was stupid and would never happen.
Yet it happens more and more as ISPs provide deals which allows subscribers to download music from their portal, though AFAIK all those are still under DRM, which really sucks.
It just needs to be generalized to get away with this DRM aberation.
Instead of a promise not sue, why not just take the extra step and just have a subscription service? The university ponies up like $10 a month per student, and the students can share all the files they want to. Instead of looking like trying to run a protection racket, the recording company actually looks, well enlightened, rather than like a bunch of Dons...
This is my sig.
The word would be danegeld (or you might prefer this definition better).
All have had greedy management that is worthless.
I am by no means a big union fanboy... but I've seen more people dump more shit on the auto industry in the last month, in on the unions in particular, and I'm just colorblind with rage. I mean, Detroit's asking for 35 billion dollars in bailouts and we say that's ridiculous, when our own service sector of banking and insurance just evaporated 4 trillion dollars in national wealth because our goddamned software could not adequately forecast credit correctly. GM never fucked up as bad as IT did.
Yeah, like the IT sector has room to talk about greed. We just have greedy management that is worth something. Like, we bitch about the unions having all of this work, and we get paid easily two to three times as much as a line worker on the assembly line to sit on our asses in air conditioned offices, munching on company provided food and bitch that the free coffee isn't starbucks. Yeah, there should not be a single fucking person on this board saying that the UAW is greedy for $45/hour in wages and benefits when more than a few of us have pimps that charge easily double or triple or that to companies for our hourly rates. We complain about how terrible it is that the UAW has a "jobs bank" and yet we all seem to enjoy at least some bench time in the consulting world and its the same goddamned thing.
The only thing that sets us apart from Detroit is that the present IT companies are still largely run by their founders and so are making money. But, 20 years from now, Microsoft will be sinking, Oracle will be in the tank, Apple will be the Chrysler of IT... you watch. Even Linux will wind up drowning in its own dogma over that course of time as the original generations that actually know how computers work will be replaced by a bunch of javascript drones.
IT is as doomed to be just as byzantine as the US auto-industry.... it's successful, and the greedy just descend on it like locusts... today's stupid PMs are tomorrow's CEOs.
This is my sig.
It seems like the music industry is finally realizing that the constant harassing isn't going to work, so instead of giving up, seems like they're making a last ditch effort to still get money. The Universities should not have to buy into this. This will simply play into RIAA's pockets. Furthermore, this is unfair to those who just graduated from a university or are not attending yet. In short-- this is lame.
When I read: "It's not a full license, just a basic promise that they won't sue" I can only think of the worst mafia.
My sister's school, Baylor University, among many universities encourage the use of the Ruckus service which already accounts for any licensing issues, including those with Warner.
From Baylor's "The Lariat" article
Millions of songs free for collegians
KATE BOSWELL, Jan. 23, 2007:
"Ruckus avoids copyright infringement through its direct relationship with the record labels, Lawson said. Ruckus has agreements with major labels, such as Warner and EMI, as well as several thousand independent labels."
I will not substantiate my opinion, as it's been covered any time in the last ten years a post about the RIAA comes up: In making this statement, I posit that warner's desire is only to monopolize their music rather than encourage the use of well-developed, mature service which are already in place.
I am a professional musician and I think this is blackmail. Sounds a lot like Microsofts blackmail against linux developers...sign here, pay us some cash and we promise we wont sue you. The record labels need to go broke more than GM does... they are not producing great music. just disposable music. Execs have been heard saying James Brown would never have been signed in todays climate... The corporations dictate the streets. They are the gate keepers and they created this culture of disposable crap and they could end it too if they wanted. I think the fact the labels are putting the most effort behind the least talented artists is half the reason their income stream is drying up. People like "disposable" artists now...they dont become real fans who want to buy your CD because they want to support you. If your next single isnt as hot as the last they will drop you faster than you can say "john mccain". They sell emptiness. I hope they go broke...real artists can make a living without them these days...
Do you have a source for this? Not that I doubt you particularly, but I'd love to see this.
It's a bad idea and I'll tell you why, here in Spain we've this method at a national level, that is, you can download anything using p2p but there is something similar to a tax applied to every CD, memory card, handset, etc. That money goes entirely to the (Spanish) Riaa, who spends it lobbing against our rights.
In my own opinion it's way better to learn cryptography and use ciphered protocols rather than giving away your bucks to people that will use them against you.
What about a deaf student/ISP customer? Are they going to be forced into this scam? How about people who just plain hate any major-label music and have the conviction to stay completely free of it?
This is a load of bollocks and has NO model in which it makes sense without screwing some people over.
... played live is a great feeling when everyone starts shouting "F*** you I won't do as you tell me!"
Music used to be an art. Now it's a business. It's not aiming at truth or beauty anymore but at mass audience. Is there any composer you would remind of since the end of WWII from where the society of consommation has begun ? None if you are not a teen.
But the strangest thing is that getting incomes from products whose marginal cost is 0 (computer files) is normaly simply impossible. That's why the majors to survive have to break the rules of the market.
They've been screwing people over for too long, and now they're grabbing at straws as their false empires fall beneath them.
[sarcasm]I could see college students loving the added cost of a music tax to their tuition. Especially those that don't do anything to warrant the music tax in today's economy.[/sarcasm]
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Subscription music services.
That's an interesting point, and it can be taken one step further. How can the RIAA convince a jury that, by the preponderance of the evidence, the university is responsible for copyright infringement done by its students? That's as daft as saying the DEA ought to arrest the university president because some the students are smoking pot.
Seems to me the university has nothing to lose by letting this go to trial.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Fuck off!
Isn't it amazing how every new scheme they come up lately involves receiving lawsuit settlement money... without actually having to expend the time, money and effort of identifying defendants and suing them directly anymore?
Like my grandmother always said, you can't have both the milk and the milk money.
There is nothing good at all about this kind of plan. Education costs, for one, are already high enough. I remember being a student not too long ago, and it was annoying to have to pay for cable tv that I rarely watched. Now students have to subsidize the music industry as well?
The real problem is that Detroit HAD no real competition because we all say buy American, without thinking about where the cars are made. Right now, American content is actually higher in foreign cars such as Toyota, Honda, Lexus, etc. Right now, GM and Chrysler are pushing for manufactuering to be moved to CHINA! The real question is how should they get out of this?
The answer is BREAK THEM APART. Seriously. We should offer them loans and/or bail-out, a modified fast bankruptcy, and then they break each company that accepts the help into 3 or more new car companies with NO REGULATORS. This will create new companies with new management and a chance to compete. Once that is done, then they should not be allowed to buy, be bought, or merge with another company for a decade or more. Let them sink or swim. I think that they will learn to swim fast.
At the same time, we need to use about 1-2B for other small car companies. These need to be ZERO EMISSION cars only. So that means tesla would get their 400M loan. Not much at all. So would others that need it assuming they are American built (or at least nafta built). So that would mean that Phoenix would not qualify since they are actually a chinese car.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If you see the RIAA, Warnabrotha!
Bottom Line: People, unfortunately, the younger the more commonplace, feel that music SHOULD be shared because it can be shared. Artists have a RIGHT to be paid for their labors. I don't care if we cut out the music distribution industry (like NIN has done with a few of Trent's releases, or like Counting Crows has done with their live shows) but PAY THE PEOPLE INVOLVED IN THE PRODUCTION/Distibution of a product. IT IS ONLY FAIR. IT IS A MORAL ISSUE!!!!!!!!! I WANT to buy music, as I want my favorite artists to keep doing what they have done...and my ipod has 20,000 songs on it...all paid for. And no, I'm not stupid, I just happen to feel that everyone deserves to be paid for their labor.
Yes, it's great when you have a load of individuals who are just like each other!
People don't realize that the government can only appropriate funds from one party to another. If we were to tax universities for music, we would indeed see a decrease in wealth of university attendees (and believe me, I'm one of them -- we don't have much wealth to begin with). Surely, a music tax would only further disable this demographic from buying merchandise and going to concerts - what the musicians actually make their money on. Once again, the record labels are trying to lucratively profit while making us believe that we're supporting the artist. And that doesn't even include the money the universities would have to spend to keep up with those ridiculous regulations and restrictions. And THAT would be a money hog.
The real problem is that Detroit HAD no real competition because we all say buy American
Two things.
First off, the engines and transmissions in most American cars are made in the USA. Cars built in the USA from other countries still ship their engines here for the most part. The engine and tranny is the most complicated part of the car and in a sense, the soul of a car company is the engines that it makes. That is why they call it General Motors, and not General Cars.
Secondly, I'm in favor of rethinking this whole free trade concept. Free trade calls for participants to trade fairly and evenly. While there is some squabbling between the USA and the EU, by and large, trade between those countries is fair. On the other hand, the rest of the world views the West as a dumping ground for its goods. Seriously, go look at even Bush's trade representative white papers and you'll see the same complaints about Japan and Korea that have been on the books now for thirty years. China is no different and complaints against them will never be resolved.
In my mind, as soon as Bush decided to A) spend a ton of money and lives in a federal project to bring democracy to Iraq, and then B) bail out the very investment banks and firms that have been begging for more free trade and deregulation, then, he took the idea of laisez faire government off of the table for the time being. The free market f--- up. The banks were stupid, and our manufacturing lost. So there's no victory at all for the USA in any aspect of trade. Hey, we're not as good as the rest of the world. There's a thing as too much competition and we need to put up the shields, regroup, and retool society so that we can be competitive again someday. Right now, we are not.
Viewed in that context, fixing Detroit and the rest of the US manufacturing system is going to take a lot more than just a bailout to GM and asking the union to accept working for the same wages as their chinese counterparts. It's going to take a serious re-investment into our school system, a cultural change that encourages geekdom... the guys that tinker with tools in the shop need to be encouraged and we need to have these people get educated with the calculus and engineering disciplines. So, there needs to be a path from vocational education to college and we need to have curricula that links the sciences to the thing of making tools.
While we are at it, we might trade exchanging physical goods for a freeer trade of ideas and invention. Why should a third world country be held back from manufacturing because of a patent in the first world? If they can make their own stuff, and the first world makes its own stuff and everyone shares in the knowledge, then you don't have a topsy turvy capital world where goods are being moved all over the planet in response to some fat-ass investor, that just received a giant federal bailout, looking to maximize a profit.
I know that there are many conservatives out there that would reject that as a heavy handed federal intervention, but, all of these things are geared towards making America more self sufficient, and I think self-sufficiency, self-reliance, inventiveness were conservative values. If the Republican Party needs to change one thing, it needs to become the party of the conservative family guy trying to make something in the shop to get ahead, more than the MBA making 250k a year bitching about his taxes. The former is actually useful, and the latter is not.
This is my sig.
It's a game...we're winning but we'll never be done. It's like that " The Cost of freedom is eternal vigilance " crap.... There's always going to be a group of jerks, corporate or not trying to make 300% more money every cycle, and if they have to BS to get it they will. This scheme is laughable, and won't ever see the light of day, but only because we fight back. It's getting a little boring, every year, some new attempt to try and get more from nothing, and I'm not only referring to music and their distributors (pimps). I'm a working dude and frankly only get paid (rather well) for work done. If you don't understand why we think it's boring for some Princess to whine about being ripped off because she's owed for goods and services un rendered tough. Artists used to kick butt, do concerts, sell their souls for wealth... Know they all want to be able to buy an island from the royalties from a few top charters.... Get a job and shut up....we're tired of you "special" people... Songbirds are a dime a dozen, why must the sheep elevate them all ?
... on record companies because of the inevitable destruction of hotel rooms by bands employed by the record companies.
I say go ahead and tax the little bastards!
Would the media companies provide a refund if I could prove that I didn't use the so called services they offer?
If it were something like providing 'free' bus rides or 'free' access to specialized recreation facilities, then I can get along with paying for services that I may or may not use. Those freebies are aimed at improving the health and well being of a community.
Being forced to 'improve' the bottom line of media companies, or face the threat of lawsuits, seems like extortion.
Buy them used. You get music, the RIAA gets nothing. Rip the CDs yourself and then sell the CDs back to the shop you bought them from.
Don't use BitTorrent. That can be traced easily. Instead, use the Alt.Binaries hierarchies in USENET . Using NZB , downloading is a couple of mouse clicks, and it's faster than BitTorrent. There are diverse websites which track the latest uploads to alt.binaries.foo.bar.baz and will generate the NZB for you at the click of a mouse button.
USENET usage is damned difficult for the RIAA to trace.
USENET also can provide you the latest movies and television. Ever run into a movie torrent that was full of files with the .rar suffix that you had to run through an application to assemble? That file was originally on USENET.
I pay about US$6.00 a month to a newsgroup provider and get almost 11 GB in data transfers a month. As I almost NEVER use all that in one month, it rolls over to the next month. I now have almost 40 GB of data transfer available to me, so it's unlikely that I will ever run up against any download limits in a month ever again.
US$6.00 a month equals the cost of one pack of cigarettes or a small pizza or a six pack of inferior beer or a 12 pack of Coke or half a movie ticket, etc, etc, etc.
The Boston Public Library has CDs and DVDs, free to borrow with a BPL library card. As do most other libraries across the US. Likely, your University library has them as well.
Yes, I am talking about copyright infringement. It's illegal. YOU have to decide about the morality of it.
I don't want YOU doing something stupid and getting caught by the MAFIAA.
USENET is your friend.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
If you're going to pay musicians from a pool, take the opportunity to reshape the industry. There's no sense putting a for-profit entity in charge of a tax, or a tax-like fee. RIAA and its components have done enough damage already.
Have you heard what they call music these days? I bet they have a DoD contract to produce that racket as munitions.
I'd much rather tell the RIAA to go DIAF.
> [...]hand it over to a recording industry entity that promises to distribute the proceeds fairly. [...]
"Fairly" meaning the Warner division that tracks this windfall will get most of it, and the rest will go directly to the parent company's bottom line. Because what's good for Warner is good for the artists, right?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The EFF proposed voluntary collective license 6 or so years ago, and were told to get bent. It looks, however, like the music labels are coming around.
This is actually a good thing, as it applies radio style licensing to the internet. Assuming this pilot program is put in place, it will provide serious credit to efforts of EFF and other such organizations to implement this across the entire internet.
From there it could go international, and assuming its implemented universally it could undermine the MAFIAA's stated purposes for the DMCA, resulting in reform!
In the grand scheme of things, this is an excellent development!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I'm deaf you insensitive clod!
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I don't burn music/movies onto cds and dvds... yet I pay a levy for it.
Now they want me to pay for filesharing on networks I don't access? (I would need to connect to resisdence network.)
Why should I subsidize yours or anyone else's poor music choices???
I'd love to change the world but I can't find the source code.
extortion continues..
This business model is the holy grail! It is the mother of all subscription schemes. It is your new god!
...by dropping music programs en masse. Let these bloodsucking junkies (where did you think RIAA money went?) take on the responsibility of teaching their own, and quit subsidizing them.
Just do what Cambridge did with the electricity company many years ago, (and they only recently got out of it). T
ell them you'll only agree with a long term contract and set your own price.
Then force them to take it because otherwise they'll get nothing.
Make the contract for 400 years at this (relativelty low) price.
Tell your students that sharing is good and let the locals use your new resource, in fact share with anyone anywhere near your university.
Eventually they'll realise they're being stupid.
And then it's too late, because inflation, and your random sharing practices are making this deal not worth it.
Then say "You asked us to do this deal, and out of the kindness of our hearts ..."
and so on.
*Or* they can just except that this is not a business model and they don't have the power to assume people are doing things illegally.
omg, the music industry is going down, we should bail them out too!
And I'll say it again.
Great idea. Much better to be taxed up front in my opinion than to be potentially sued.
Except for the fact that will never work.
I'm a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar...
-Lucy-
And where would this pool of money come from? Why tuitions and "fees" of course.
Warner Music, kiss my ass!
- Signed, a 40 year old geek who's still in school but declines to listen to any of the crap you losers are peddling these days. If this bs passes at my school, you better have my "opt-out" reimbursement ready for me.
And this comes from someone who has never burned a song or cd from the web ever. I did put my band on mp3.com back in the day though. Obviously we did not make any money from that - but then again we didn't try that hard.
Get up!