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UK Proposes Broadband Expansion, Plus a Music and Film Tax
Wowsers writes "First the tech illiterates in the UK government want to extend broadband internet connections to every home, whether it makes sense or not, then at the same time they propose a £20 per year (approx $29US) broadband tax which they claim will pay the record and film industries for their failed business models. Coincidence the two proposals are linked? And why should people be forced to pay for the failed film and music industries?"
If the tax REALLY meant that we were free to download whatever we wanted, and the RIAA / MPAA extortion tax had already been paid, we could do away with all the ISP torrent throttling / shaping, and all the frivolous lawsuits (which lets face it, we pay for anyway in terms of other taxes).
Don't the Canadians pay a small tax on black CD/DVD media for a similar reason? Given the tax has been there for a while, maybe some Canadians can give their own opinions, given they're more intermediately aware of it.
Oh, and a small apology for the next bit...
Come on you Canadians, tell us what this is all aboot!
The industries are hardly failed. Perhaps 'failing', but even failing might be too strong a word.
The 'failed' status is propaganda spread by those industries so that they don't have to change with the times. We shouldn't be reinforcing their marketing.
How would that tax apply to, say, companies and people that just use the Internet for anything but pirated copy downloads?
How would that money be distributed? Worldwide? Europe? UK only?
I would finally prefer ISP to fine labels for poor content protection which causes network congestion and degradation!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
I don't know if I'm more angry at the fact that I'm paying for the chancer who downloads movies and mp3s he wouldn't pay for anyway or for the fact only that certain oligopoly insiders will get their cut. The remainder who create content are ignored. (I'm not just talking about music and film, digital art has many forms including everything from fiction to high quality blogs, graphic arts, photography and source code)
Shame on the British Government for U.S. style pandering to the whiners in the MPAA and RIAA cartels.
Music industry is not very useful in the age of internet. They have no added value. Why do a music-industry "Bail-out"???
Music industry, car industry (for cars with internal combustion) - it's all a bit obsolete.
To me this feels like doing a bailout for steam engine locomotives.
Old stuff just disappears. Accept it.
The tax is to pay for a new government department that will aid lawsuits file sharers and hold anonymised information that can be used to identify repeat infringers.
And yes, I know anonymised information to identify people makes no fucking sense, but that's how the report phrased it. I'm still trying to figure out how it can be both anonymous and used to identify too.
I've not only read TFA but I've read the actual interim report too and the whole thing was simply non-sensical. If you read the section on copyrights etc. the first few pages are really quite good- they make comments along the lines of "We realise file sharing is something that's widely done and widely accepted and that people have come to accept. It is clear therefore that in this case it is perhaps the laws and business models that need to change". But then after the first few pages the mood changes completely and they outright contradict statements such as the above by mentioning they intend to introduce a new department and so on to protect failing business models and not change the laws.
I find this particularly interesting because they've clearly put it into the report to make it sound like they care about the other side of the argument, but more importantly- it shows they understand the problem in it's entirety. If they understand it but are contradicting their understanding of it anyway then frankly there's only one possible explanation I can come up with for this obscure situation- corruption. I can simply see no other reason why they'd accept they're fighting the unfightable but going to do it and appease the music and movie industry anyway.
Some of snippets that were interesting were statements that the UK is the world's biggest exporter of culture. That seems rather unlikely to me, certainly compared to the US' McDonalds, Hollywood, RIAA affiliated companies etc. I can't see that we come close.
The only upside of the report I can see is that they have at least done away with the idea of three strikes and intend to follow the lawsuits based approach. This is good because unless the UK courts are equally corrupt as Lord Carter clearly is then this should be shown up to be a massive waste of money. The RIAA's evidence doesn't stand up in court at the end of the day because there is still no way to attach file sharing to a particular person (only to a particular IP) other than literally sitting looking over their shoulder and watching them do it.
The irony of the proposed tax is that it's actually worse for everyone than if it were a tax to legalise P2P. If it were for that then more people would be happier, the music industry would be netting in a small fortune, file sharers would be paying a not unreasonable amount. The people who would lose out are those who don't file share but still have to pay the tax. As it stands though the proposed solution only gives the music industry a load more unwinnable cases, the tax payer is funding another ultimately useless government department and ISPs have to bear the cost of dealing with the situation.
The final report is still to come, and hopefully MPs will realise the idiocy behind all this. Certainly the Conservatives seem to realise the idiocy of a tax-based approach, even if they as a party support prevention of file sharing through equally unworkable methods. The problem is of course, Labour can do what they want, and if they crack the whip it doesn't matter what the other parties want, it doesn't matter what the MPs themselves want, all that matters is what the Labour niche- Brown, Burnham, Carter and probably Smith want.
As typical of "our" "Government" this policy is ill-thought-out, completely out-of-touch with voter's opinions and as usual the "Government" listen to the wrong people.
1)A legal right to broadband in every home is *up to* 2Mb only. I know people who "technically" have broadband and *at best* up to 512Mb.
2) If a £20 "tax" were introduced, the piracy rate would increase because people will want to justify the increased cost - "If I have to pay the music publishers a levy even if I do not pirate thier music - I must as well start doing it then"
3) The "Government" & Music industry want to monitor our connections for illegal material (thankfully but idiotically only over P2P traffic). The early stages of monitoring ("because of crime and terrorism") our connections is already under way.
I know that many ISPs and other telecommunication companies have criticized the report this announcement was based on.
Intrestingly the European Human Rights act guarantees an individual's right to privacy - as far as I know the U.K. have not officailly signed-up to it yet.
The BBC is funded by a direct tax on households with television. It carries no (overt) advertising and therefore is able to provide programmes without reference to the Rupert Murdoch world-view, unlike Sky. Sky should definitely not receive any taxpayer subvention as it exists to promote the views of an Australian/American billionaire, like its US counterpart Fox News.
I am afraid that this latest proposal is nothing to do with the BBC model, it is all about keeping foreign recording companies in the country and onside. Which is about continuing to try to keep the City of London at a level of importance disproportionate to the country as a whole. Just about every plan we hear nowadays is about taxing the rest of us to, ultimately, keep bankers in bonuses.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
By the time they'd got to Leningrad, you didn't have too much choice.
If you didn't beat them there, they've been in Moscow and you'd be Sprechen die Deutsch.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
This article is a bit mis-leading. Frighteningly, a more accurate account actually makes it sound even worse.
The government is planning to force ISPs to extend 2Mbps service to all locations with-in their domain.
The government also plans to force ISPs to "provide data about serial copyright-breakers to music and film companies..."
The government would create an agency to over-see this transfer of data about music/film copyright infringers, and the ISPs would flip the bill for the costs of operating this new agency.
Speaking of the Internet in the UK, the Register reported yesterday:
The government today rejected any prospect of US-style "net neutrality" laws to prevent ISPs from charging online content providers for traffic prioritisation, or from restricting bandwidth-hungry protocols such as BitTorrent.
Right. I suppose Great Leader will need to have his new FCC guy straighten them out.
It's funny how people say 'failed businessmodels' if they are the ones who are ripping those companies off.. There's nothing wrong with their businessmodel, it's a lot of consumers who are just wrong, because it's easy to steal music/movies these days using the internet doesn't mean it is ok to do so.. Why should I pay for some deadbeats who should be punished instead of being rewarded for their actions. If you want to listen to music of want to watch a movie but you are not willing to pay for it then you just wait until it's on the radio/tv or just wait until the price has dropped. There is no reason other than your own lack of moral to steal movies/music..
Currently rather busy emptying the public coffers into the pockets of the banks. Unemployment is rising rather quickly so the tax haul is reducing - thus, a new income stream must be found and the internet is untaxed.
You could argue, and you'd be right if you did, that connection prices in the UK, as say compared to Europe, are extremely high with a seriously sh*tty service for your money and that this constitutes a form of tax. Call it a "ha ha, you live on an Island, where are you going to go for a cheaper connection?" tax *(the same principle can be applied to most things on the particular bit of dirt we call the UK).
It says everything you need to know about Government, the ISP's and capitalism in general. Profit is privatised and loss is socialised.
WIth a bit of luck it will be a voluntary tax and we can all refuse to pay it and f*ck the lot of them.
First the tech illiterates in the UK government want to extend broadband internet connections to every home, whether it makes sense or not
This isn't quite so daft in context: the UK used to have a nationalised phone company. Although this was privatized and became BT many moons ago they've subsequently enjoyed a semi-monopoly. Most ADSL broadband services, whatever the brand, are re-badged BT services - Its only fairly recently that some ADSL providers started installing their own equipment at exchanges.
One of the quid-pro-quos for this commercial advantage is that BT are obliged to provide (voice) connections to every household. Updating this to include data connections in some way is eminently sensible - at lesat in principle.
A pox on the 20 quid tax to fund a copyright enforcement quango, though.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Personally I think there's a huge difference between handing out money to corporations responsible to their shareholders and an the BBC who's responsibility is to fulfill a charter established by the people who are stumping up the cash (albeit via government).
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
The report also kills off any hope of seeing net neutrality laws in the UK under a labour government. Not only have they said they don't want laws for net neutrality, they've outright said they believe it's the wrong thing to do and that ISPs should be able to pick and choose what to transfer, for who and at what cost.
This was supposed to be a report for the UK's digital future but coupled with this, my above post and the fact they're referring to things like DRM that even the music industry now accepts is a failure as solutions to piracy then it sounds more like a report for a draconian broadband dark age.
Nothing in this report bar the idea of universal broadband access can help the UK's technology sector. Despite accepting that it's worth £50bn they've put what they also accepted was only worth about £3bn - the creative industries above it. This report is out and out going to destroy any chance of the UK ever catching up to the world technology leaders if the actions included are carried out. Again, the fact Carter can put a £3bn industry above a £50bn industry suggests Carter is corrupt to the core and is putting his personal agenda above the health of the country's economy. Just as Labour gutted the UK's science research, they're now gutting the rest of the technology futures in the UK.
Everyone who watches broadcast TV yes.
It's not completely different, as even though the TV license money only goes to a couple of channels BBC & Channel 4 you can't choose not to pay if you only watch other channels. Where it starts to differ is that this £20 a year doesn't give anyone the right to do anything, it just funds a government department we don't even want.
The UK government is getting daft with corporate welfare. Banks get billions of pounds, the recording industry is going to get hundreds of millions under this proposal, and BT is also likely to get a big wad of taxpayer money running broadband out to the most remote areas.
And yet, the government and media still come down hardest on the 'scroungers' receiving state benefit for unemployment. The News Of The World carried a front page story about 'the biggest scroungers in Britain' the same week Brown bailed out the banks for the first time. The government has maintained its advertising campaign trying to convince people on benefits can go to prison if they lie about their status (whereas in reality most of the people 'caught' doing this haven't done anything wrong and are let go).
The message seems clear: if you are a giant corporation and a bank that has got used to making ridiculous profits and can't anymore, the government will throw huge amounts of taxpayer money at you. But if you dare to try and diddle the government out of £40 a week they are going to FUCK you SO hard...
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
You didn't. The buggars still live in Buckingham palace
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
It works like this. Everyone in the UK who owns a T.V. has to buy a licence for £131.50 ($187.2). The money raised all goes to fund the BBC, which is "non-commercial" ie no ads etc. This covers the cost of some 7 TV channels and numerous national and local radio channels, as well as the BBCi online services. The BBC also gains revenue from sales of it's programmes abroad, and from a commercial merchandising arm. None of the licence fee goes to any other broadcaster. ITV, Channel Four, Channel Five, B-Sky-B (Sky) and Vigin media are all commercial operations and depend on advertising revenue etc for their income.
Having said all that, I don't see that this is relevent to a "Broadband Tax" at all. This is just another misguided nonsense from this misguided and non-sensical govenrment that we Brits are currently enduring.
Smivs on the intertubes!
That isn't a belief personal to you, its one shared by the UK public at large. Having had the BBC running alongside commercial stations for so long means that I doubt the UK public would be easily fooled by a government trying to blur the line and hand out taxpayer money to commercial media companies.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Isn't the BBC almost entirely funded by taxing everyone in the UK with a TV? How is this any different?
Read TFA (particularly the second link). This money is not going into the pockets of struggling artists.
In contrast, the TV license fee really does pay for a number of high quality, ad free TV and radio channels (plus numerous comittees, well-paid executives and Jonathan Ross, but nothing's perfect...) I'm sure its technically correct to call it a tax, but (unlike taxes on fuel, booze and tobacco etc.) it is collected and distributed separately and doesn't just disappear into government coffers.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
That is quite unfair on TV shows, I download tv shows much more than I download movies and I hardly even download any music.
shouldn't they give some of that tax to tv producers too?
If it suddenly completely legal to download films and music and the artists/producers are getting their money through my tax, what incentive is there for me to go out and buy the CD/DVD/Mp3 from a brick shop or even from a digital content delivery site like iTunes?
Something tells me that these companys would have even bigger influence than our UK's MPIAA/RIAA (BMI?) in lobbying to get such legislation passed once it becomes apparent that *their* business model is under threat.
In the future I may welcome this, however at the moment, I do not think there's any way the money could be divided fairly between artists and considering the state of our economy at the moment, that's just too many lost jobs for the government to create.
So they charge everyone with broadband 20 quid to effectively allow them to legally download everything for free.
So no one will buy music/video again - they've already paid for it.
How will the money raised by this tax get distributed to the artists ?
Of course the answer is it won't. It will shore up the record companies, who will still bleat about people stealing music and use that as the excuse for the artists to get even further shafted.
Welcome to 21st Century Government - where the government's only purpose is to take your money from you and give it to whoever currently has their ear (and wallet).
Universal broadband availability should certainly be mandated in any modern industrial economy, but the corrupt handout for the record industry is just shameful, unless it is a yearly payment that gives everyone the right to download and share anything they want.
Somehow, I can't imaging that from the current British government, which has granted unprecedented rights to large corporate interests at the (massive) expense of the general population.
Lets just hope we don't end up with a Tory government soon, as they were even worse, last time they were in power.
The town of Ashland, OR was way ahead of the curve getting internet out to all its residents. It was owned and managed by the city itself (they fancy themselves progressive).
Of course, the artificially low price keeps out competitors, but because of that it's been losing quite a bit of money. Rather than raise the price of the broadband connection, the beneficent city leaders recently decided to add a surcharge to all resident's power bills. All residents, whether they utilize the connection or not. Power bills.
Anyway, our leaders here in the US are no more competent than your leaders over in the UK.
The BBC is funded that way so that it doesn't have to carry advertising, which means advertisers cannot effectively blackmail it into ignoring certain topics. It also ensures that non-commercially viable minority views can be represented. What the record companies are asking for is a tax so they can make more money doing more of the same thing that is already bringing them substantial financial returns (with growth reported yet again for 2008) - and only the big commercial record companies would get a look in, resulting in minority interests being further suppressed. The result is the complete opposite of what BBC provides.
No, the BBC is funded by taxing everyone in the UK who has a equipment that they use to watches or records TV signals as they are shown.
The difference is that the TV License has a benefit (it lets you have a TV, it funds an organisation that provides the only watchable TV channel, and it funds some decent UK shows that aren't complete drivel* and which are an hour long if they are scheduled for an hour, rather than being 40 minutes long in an hour long slot) while the broadband tax will be levied on people to cover the illegal actions of others even if the person being taxed isn't doing anything illegal themselves.
.
* Channel 4 has "Big Brother", BBC produces things like QI. If I had to specifically decide which my license fee went to and which producers had to be locked away for eternity for crimes against TV and sanity, the Big Brother people would definitely have to be the ones locked in the Big Brother house along with the mindless contestants of each series they've made so far.
I'd just like to say that I don't think the TV license should be called a tax; even if it's virtually equivalent to one.
Taxes are collected and administered by the Government. TV license fees are not.
There's a good and important reason for that: To keep public television free of governmental/political interference.
Calling the TV license a tax, as well as referring to the BBC and other (west-)European public TV companies as 'government-owned' and similar gives the inaccurate picture that they're under some kind of direct government control, which they are not.
The £20 will not in anyway mean downloading music will suddenly be legal. It will just be another NuLabour Tax. And guess what Gordon Browns latest arsewave is? For everyone in the UK to have broadband. So every one will have to pay the new Tax. Anyone know how much the recording industry have donated to the NuLabour party? Nuff said.
Posting one liners as an AC and calling people an idiot is trolling. Using an analogy to demonstrate the stupidity of someones position is not.
Its called 'Anonymous Coward' for a reason you know...
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
The "Industry" wants taxpayers to pay for an official entity to essentially enforce DRM on the entire population.
Didn't we start dumping tea over the gunwales because of something like this?
Granted, times have changed, but c'mon folks.
If the tax REALLY meant that we were free to download whatever we wanted, and the RIAA / MPAA extortion tax had already been paid, we could do away with all the ISP torrent throttling / shaping, and all the frivolous lawsuits (which lets face it, we pay for anyway in terms of other taxes).
And what about those who don't download or upload such copyrighted material without permission? We should NOT have to pay this extra fee/tax/whatever. The music/movie/games businesses have no right to dip into my pocket. If I buy something from them (it happens, occasionally), then I'll pay for it. However, I doubt if my annual spend on CDs and DVDs nowadays exceeds their proposed monthly fee.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I'd be happy to pay a couple dollars more per month to my provider having a chance to legally download and own some unrestricted movies and music I like for that. Everybody pays that, the media industry is saved.
But times are long still before the digital revolution comes, and all (data, voice, video and audio) can come at once and without zillions different standards in the same network pipe, so to say: press a button, watch that movie. Press another: listen to that song: noone would even need having much storage home anymore, the media industry could, as top node provider, getting the royalties from the lower network providers who give pure bandwidth to final users. Too hard?
Oh, and: Yes, of course should broadband get to everywhere, even who "don't need" it. Like phone lines did a century ago, it's called "progress".
50*52*1000000=£2.6 billion
Banks recieve £400 billion: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7658277.stm
And if you think that the money given to banks is going to their employees, your understanding of capitalism sucks even more than your arithmetic.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I saw the shill from the music industry playing the "oh my god we are so poor and billions of pounds are being lost from file sharing" card. I was amazed he was able to say it with a straight face (although I guess he could believe his own shit).
He went on to say that this report (an interim report!) "didn't go far enough" to deal with the crippling online piracy that is causing music execs to have to bum for change on the streets.
And while he did mention "changing and adapting the business plan" to take advantage of the online era, the iTunes store was conspicuously absent (he did mention other services specifically by name, including Nokia's subscription service with their phones). So it's clear that the industry doesn't want to see iTunes succeed, even with their new tiered pricing deal. It seems that a runaway success download music store, with thousands of people buying tracks that "they could easily get for free" isn't worth mentioning in an interview about how the music industry is dealing with online downloading... How very.... selectively forgetful of them.
So, if any British music producer/record company/BMI researcher is reading, and I'm sure there must be some. Send another "-1 full of shit" moderation up the chain of command to the PR/management. Also, let them know that they'll never be able to stop online downloading, but it's not the end of days. Some simple reasons from the music buying public:
Sales of CDs are falling because:
1. Music just isn't as good as it used to be. Hours and hours of manufactured rubbish, heavily processed and canned and then carefully timed for release to score a number 1 is not music.
2. Even if some people like that type of music, and some must do, CDs and CD singles are *far* more expensive than they should be.
3. You prosecute grannies who don't own computers, and assign arbitrarily silly values of "lost revenue" to "stolen" songs. Hint: if people who wouldn't buy it if it cost money obtain it for free, you're not losing money.
4. 99.999999999999% of the profits of music sales do not go to the artists in question that we love. At least in the public perception. I'm sure it;s something like 3% of the price of a CD goes to the artist. Now, I understand basic economics, that everyone in the chain needs to be paid, from artist, vendor, distributor, manufacturer etc, but the labels are snarfing deep at the trough and fucking everyone else over. I'd rather download the music and just send the price of the CD to the band in the post, but that would be unfair to the company that pressed the CD and the shop that sold it.
5. I have bought from iTunes, quite a lot in fact. I wanted to show you guys that it was a viable business model, but you just won't let the subject go. Ignoring the success of the store and instead moaning that people still share music (well, duh!)
6. I seem to remember the movie industry proclaim that the sky was falling when the video cassette recorder hit the shops. That "home taping will kill movies! We'll lose BILLIONS! The World Is Over!!!!", but then they started selling their movies on VHS tape and made money hand over fist. Funny that. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, home taping *didn't* kill movies. They're still going strong. The really good movies that were released after VHS recorders were around made more money than the cocaine industry in the 80s.
7. You are never going to stop online music sharing. You just can not. Even getting it classified as a felony in the US (alongside rape, murder, grand larceny, grand theft auto, online music sharing is clearly as bad as those crimes) you will not stop it. Look to the software industry - Microsoft has almost more illegal copies of Windows out there than legit installs, yet they are still making hay while the sun shines. Would they prefer if everyone bought legit copies? Of course. Can then enforce this? No. Should they? Not really - people are always going to go outside the rules. Sell your product. Make it attractive to buy so th
"Isn't the BBC almost entirely funded by taxing everyone in the UK with a TV? How is this any different?"
It's very different, firstly even people who don't share are going to have to pay it- that's the same as if people who didn't have a TV had to pay a TV license.
Secondly, it doesn't legalise P2P. The tax is there to create a new government department whose aim is to assist the music industry in bringing lawsuits against file sharers.
So why should UK people pay for the failure of music and environment industry? This is pure communist! Does even UK goverment knows their own jobless rate is going to be like 10% soon? Why should they find ways to charge people money while they keep losing their jobs? UK = Communist!
And the Komodo Dragon. Don't forget the Komodo Dragon.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
I acquire all my music/films/software legally.
If I'm going to be taxed on the assumption that I'm illegally downloading stuff, then I guess I might as well go ahead and start getting pirated versions instead.
If you punish people for things they haven't actually done, expect them to go off and start doing it.
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
go on, I'll bite: Why should the music industry be any different to the banking sector, or car manufacturers? The UK government has decided to spend it's way out of the recession and they're not too worried where the money's going to come from - that'll be somebody elses problem after the next election...
The interesting thing about the licence fee is that you have to pay it if you have *any* broadcast recieving equipment (ariel, dish, etc) set up in your house, regardless of whether you want the BBC service or not. There have been free to watch channels in the UK for years now, and there are more now than ever before (thanks to digital broadcasting), but thanks to the arcane broacdasting laws in place you are unable to watch them without first paying the BBC licencing fee.
To be fair, that does also cover a huge chunk of the cost of running the UK's TV transmitters. They're not cheap.
As most people here can probably see, this is a technological and financial disaster waiting to happen. Even without the media company tax, free broadband, by 2012 no less, is going to be an absolute nightmare for all concerned and will most likely help to degrade broadband performance. If they really cared they'd be leaning on the likes of BT to upgrade the current infrastructure so ISP speeds and costs can slowly come down.
Silly rabbit
The more I look at my own use of home broadband the less I'm attracted to it. It seems to me that my limited use - email, a bit of web surfing and the occasional game - is costing me a huge amount of money each month. If I'm seriously asked to pay a premium to cover downloading of material by other people then the whole thing becomes even less attractive. Add in the hassles of preventing or dealing with viruses, malware, computers crashing, constant terrifying stories about people inadvertantly clicking on some dodgy site and getting hauled to jail (ah, hyperbole), identity fraud and all the rest of it, I start to wonder whether the whole "computer and home broadband" thing is worth it for me at all. I'm an IT manager (so granted I get computer access all day and wouldn't miss it at home that much), but people like my poor old Mum who has never so much as seen a computer running other than in shops are less and less likely to ever get anywhere near a computer. This kind of thing just alienates people further.
is that the government also wants to give everyone 2Mb broadband, which means those who can't afford broadband get it anyway, AND they don't have to pay this crappy fee.
Summation 2
If I'm paying £20 for downloading music illegally, you better believe I'm going to get my money's worth.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
It's easy to see how this type of legislation gets in place. People like Lord Snape and Lord Moonie are obviously taking backhanders to serve their master, Gordemort.
When you look at what happened in France yesterday, the riots, the marches, the protests on a large scale, it's so sad that the British public aren't willing to do the same thing. The sooner the Brown-shirt Regime is toppled, the better.
Of course none of this legislation is really about music or movies, it's about further justifying Hadrian's Firewall, and ironically duping the UK taxpayers into willingly paying for their own prison. I'm sure the Musikpolitzei that will be formed by this legislation won't restrict their activities to entertainment files.
It's not paid to the BBC, it's paid to the government, who then give a blob of money to the BBC. Small, but subtle difference.
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
If torrents where legal, surely it's easy to make money.
1) Make sure you only have one torrent for each thing.
2) Index sensibly. Hyperlink related/reference/influenced by/influences items.
3) Burn in your own logo top right on each movie/episode.
4) Charge a tiny amount for each download. Or (better perhaps) charge for advertising space.
Why don't people learn from AllOfMp3? If it's cheap enough and a good service, people can't be bothered to pirate. If just looking at the site is generating income, even better.
Sure people will copy among themselves, but you can't stop that, and will cause problems for yourself it you try. If there is a logo burnt in, it's just free advertising anyway.
Distribute the advertising income according to where people are spending their time on the site (i.e. hit show).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There should be an additional tariff on visitors to wikipedia, encyclopedia publishers are seeing a drop in sales.
I could go on.
Yeah make everyone pay for something they might do, so they have less money and then choose to illegaly download your music instead of buying it. No wonder how this model is flawed... ( I can almost hear 7 of 9 say it: "Your model is flawed, it is inneficient") Do theses guys even bother to think about it... gaaahh idiots... when will they understand.. lower the cost of the CDs, you will sell MUCH MORE. I go in a music store.. I check out the CDs.. I pick several up then.. I check the price tag and drop those I cant afford in my budget... we do I bother anyway...
Great, so they're going to tax people who pay for films and music legitimately, so they can pass the money on to the production companies on behalf of the people that always pirate their films/music. That's fair. NOT.
Why the hell should I pay a tax because OTHER PEOPLE pirate stuff?! It's up to the industry to find another way to stop people pirating stuff. If film downloads were a sensible price like £1.50/$2 who'd even bother pirating?
Yeh, the money should go to bbc.co.uk :)
OK, so, I never illegally download or upload copyrighted music or video.
But if we had to pay some type of tax to cover people breaking the law, then as far as I (and many people) are concerned, it becomes perfectly approved/legal to "share" as much music or video as we like. And that is going to help their "business model"???
Or do they expect honest people to pay for music/video twice?
Calling the whole industry a failure also groups in Indy artists to that same group as well as people like Reznor or Radio Head.
You mean the ones releasing material for free?
I think it's clear from the context that it wasn't referring to these groups. In fact, nowhere in the summary does it even say "whole industry" - you're making it up.
The term 'tv tax' is just how us brits jokingly refer to the BBC licence fee, because of the special laws and allowances that have sprung up since it began. It's not actually a tax at all, it's an annual payment of about £150 that is paid to the BBC, which has independance from the government.
It may be a licence, but I think it's perfectly reasonable to also refer to it as a tax, since it is legally compulsory, and that is enforced by the Government. But yes, in a way it's worse than a tax, as it doesn't support the Government, but a private company.
If the RIAA pay the Lords, then the people must pay the RIAA - its obvious innit?
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Because a lot of us do not use the intertubes for file sharing. It has other uses. This is like charging car drivers an extra tax because they _could_ drive to HipHop dance venues, and because you have a gun, and they don't.
How's that for a car analogy - yeah, gimme the Karma!!!!
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Because they have better lobbyist and more money for lawyers!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
The OP asks, "And why should people be forced to pay for the failed film and music industries?"
The thing is, they didn't fail! The film and music industry have created, and continue to create, massive amounts of content that people disparately want. They want it so badly they are willing to acquire it illegally. They want it so badly that entire software packages, protocols and even political parties have sprung up to support the distribution of it.
They didn't fail. A business that failed would be one that produced a product no one wanted. Everyone still wants the product, and people still get it. They just don't pay for it.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Here's a better one: It's like making you pay a toll bridge fee if you have a car because you could drive over that bridge, no matter whether you actually do.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...A lot of invective here in the US is directed at small-potatoes welfare recipients.
Evidently "personal responsibility" is something you need to have if you're broke & with 4 kids, but not if you're a incompetent multimillionare executive
[though, a welfare system paying you more if you have multiple kids *is* an idea with built-in pitfalls]
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Because they're actively enjoying what they create, and what they create needs money to be made?
Well, obviously not everyone enjoys it, but there are enough to seriously consider making it a government-subsidised business.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Will the deaf still have to pay the music tax?
An unwashed moderator without a(ny) sense of humour.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I wish someone would explain to me how and why the IP industry is powerful in the UK. There are so many industries that the UK government doesn't seem to care about. The don't spend much as a percentage of GDP on research in science of technology. They seem to hate economic development. Try building any kind of high tech manufacturing. Either they will say flat out no or burden you with red tape so much that you will just have to give up. It's sad because the education in the UK has improved tremendously over the last 20 years but all that talent is wasted. (See here for more details - http://www.oecd.org/document/17/0,3343,en_2649_34111_39352401_1_1_1_37443,00.html )
The question gets more poignant though when you think that political party financing is a lot more regulated that in the USA. Lobbying in politics has never been quite what it is the USA either. Government ministers get ideas and go with them sometimes no matter how crazy they are. But normally they are ideological - the poll tax, child welfare, spying on people, high taxes, etc. So the question comes up again - why the f*** are they so gung ho about IP?