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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
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.
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.
What happens when you graduate and later get busted p2p'ing and then they find your stash from the college days?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
"Nice university you got there. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it."
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
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.