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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."
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.
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.
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?
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?
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?
I am sorry to say, that I just stole your copyrighted material. You see, as the above post was (I assume) entirely your creation, and I have just made a copy of it on my computer using my web browser, I am a dirty thief who may as well be jacking cars.
As for your idea that their business model is fine, its just the consumers who are wrong - that to me seems like the classic last words of a failing industry right there.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Why should I pay for some deadbeats who should be punished instead of being rewarded for their actions."
Yeah, that's how I feel about the music industry too.
Oh, wait, what? You were talking about consumers??? So which one do you work for then, Sony BMG? Universal?
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
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
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?
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).
This isn't the USA so thanks to the fact we pay a bit more in tax, jobless doesn't mean penniless. In the UK, you're guaranteed £60 a week if you're single, £95 if you're a couple plus another £45 a week for each child. On top of that, council tax is then free. If you rent then you get help with that to a certain level and if you've a mortgage then once you've been unemployed 13 weeks, your mortgage interest is paid at Bank of Englsnd base rate plus 1.58%.
And also because it's the UK, you don't have to shit yourself about not being able to meet HMO insurance bills. When you're unemployed, even the flat fee for prescriptions is waived.
In the UK and most of Europe, you get looked after when you're out of work. In the USA, you get fucked over when you're out of work.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
There should be an additional tariff on visitors to wikipedia, encyclopedia publishers are seeing a drop in sales.
I could go on.
Steal: Syn - Thieve
To Thieve is to deprive of property without permission.
Deprivation requires loss.
Copying a file does not cause the loss of the original.
Downloading the copy does not cause the loss of the original, or the copy.
Never mind Law, your comment failed to get past English Language.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
And similarly, if the music industry wants to take money off of people, it should wait until they buy it, rather than stealing the money from them.
That's the point that is referred to as a failed business model - not the fact that some people might copy the music.
Why should I pay for some deadbeats who should be punished instead of being rewarded for their actions.
Exactly, after the abuses the RIAA and company have made with the world's copyright laws, *specially* that of the US and UK (aren't we due for the next "we have to get in line with international standards" copyright extension?), *they* should be the ones paying very large fines to the government, and very large settlements for the poor shmucks who were once their customers. Further, I'd call any business model that requires special legislation passed for them as "failed".
No, I don't infringe their copyrights, not because I have any respect left for them though, their products just suck.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
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!