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Canadian Songwriters' Collective Licensing Bid Goes Voluntary
Last year, the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) proposed a plan to legalize the file sharing of copyrighted songs, which involved a small monthly fee to people using an internet connection. Critics of the plan complained that it amounted to another tax, and the Canadian recording industry said it violated copyright law. Now, as an anonymous reader writes,
"The SAC has renewed its bid to legalize peer-to-peer file sharing in return for a levy on Internet service. The SAC is now calling for the plan to be voluntary, with both consumers and creators having the right to opt-out. ACTRA, the leading performer group in Canada, now says it is also supportive of a legalized approach with the prospect of extending the plan to video sharing."
It's really the only way to have some kind of paid file sharing and still preserve individual "ownership" of copyright (as opposed to corporate "ownership"). If I were a Canadian musician, I'd be glad to be offered a chance to opt-out of this system (though I would probably not actually opt-out).
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I'd love to nail Shania Twain.
"The SAC has renewed its bid to legalize peer-to-peer file sharing "
Isn't it already/still legal in Canada?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Did those other taxes that were proposed go through? I remember reading on Slashdot about a tax in Canada that would be added to blank media and MP3 players which went into the pockets of the music industry up there.
If it did and this goes in place as well, they surely would be making more money off of taxes than from actual music sales!
...I'll vote for the party that supports this (Probably NDP/NPD).
This is my opinion. Everyone has a right to my opinion.
Seriously, Canada's stupid protectionist media laws have given us the fantastic sounds of Nickelback, Avril Levigne, and Alanis Morrisette. For even Neil Young there's a dozen no talent hacks being propped up by these laws-the audio equivalent of corn subsidies. And now they're going to give them even more money? Ridiculous! The US has done a lot of stupid things, but can you imagine if we were giving tax money to Billy Ray Cyrus and Li'l Wayne? Free money from the government! All you have to do is make a shitty record!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
I'd bet that any artist that opts out will get downloaded more often than they would have otherwise.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
That is only because
Bite out of apple sales
Apple might still make the coolest computers on the block but it is struggling in the face of global recession as consumers opt for cheaper alternatives. Mac sales fell 16 per cent year-on-year in February, according to research firm NPD Group. Sales of PCs, meanwhile, increased 22 per cent in the same period thanks to a boost in sales of cheap, lightweight notebooks.
which was from a newspaper which does not have an IT section but an Apple cheerleading squad was rejected from the story where Ballmer correctly called Apple a $500 logo.
In short /. will let that through but not something that says Apple sales are declining.
(Supposing, for a moment, that I were Canadian and this were to pass...)
So under this plan, I could choose to pay $x/mo; and if I did, I could legally share some content (but how do I know which content?)...
Of course, I already had -- and still have -- the choice to pay for my music as I acquire it, yet I was choosing to share it illegally instead. Why would this be different? Why wouldn't I opt out and take my chances just like I always did?
Maybe I'm sharing $xxx worth of music every month, and while I'm not willing to pay that, I think $x/mo is a pretty good price for protection.
In other words, only heavy utilizers are going to opt-in (or rather, not opt-out). Which means any participating music supplier is offering a de-facto steep discount to these customers. Which means only songs that aren't able to fetch full price are going to be offered. Which means as a music consumer I have that much less incentive to stay in the program, because suddenly my $x/mo isn't buying me what I really want.
Forget it. The whole idea is stupid. You either have to compel everyone (even those who don't want to buy the music) to participate, which is immoral, or the system won't bring in enough money to work.
Wouldn't this scheme be illegal as Negative option billing?
So, for a small fee, I can legally share music?
Let's see, for another small fee, I can get a VPS with several TB of bandwidth. How much could I charge people to access a veritable legal dumping ground of music? Mmmmm... smells like profit!
No artist gets paid.
I wish somebody could get a video of Avril Lavigne's answer to: "Did you get your cheque for your portion of the Blank CD levy?"
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
I would gladly opt-in for such a plan. Although, I would prefer that it also carried the right to share media created by artists in other countries. Of course, I would only share media with others who have also opted in for such a plan. There is far too much complexity associated with governments and other organizations spying on their citizens, repeatedly coming up with ineffective DRM techniques, etc. For a small monthly fee, I have no problems whatsoever paying for the right to have un-complicated rights to enjoy my favourite media and share it with friends.
Taxing everyone that owns an Internet connection
is like:
Instead of spending money policing ATM fraud,
let us rather LEGALIZE ATM fraud.
Then tax everyone that has a bank account
so as to offset the economic costs of the
fraud.
If I liked the product provided by big media, this kind of tribute might be okay. But it sucks.
This is the age of computer databases. People can 'opt in' to fee-based content provision just as easily as they can opt out.
This is another attempt by big media to turn the internet into another cable network dominated by them.
Um I'm just dandy with the currently levy. I pay a tax to some has been Canadian music star when I back up my files or try out distros . Since they take my money, I take their music for free.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
First, downloading music is legal in Canada. Consumers pay a levy on CDR media to offset the "losses" from downloading; heck they tried to impose this on MP3 players as well. I think the lobbying groups would probably sacrifice that levy, to get a bigger piece of a larger pie.
Second, it should be opt-IN. As another poster noted, this would be reverse billing, and not legal in Canada.
Personally; I'm fine with the way it is. I download all the music I want and I stopped buying blank CDs years ago.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
I do not unlawfully download copyrighted content so why must I pay the tax. I already have to pay a tax on my CD's that I use for backups of my own personal stuff.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
What about artists that are not members of the SAC? What about movies, games, software and other works?
Obviously, they cannot be covered by this agreement. Thus, most file-sharing will remain illegal in Canada.
Here in Canada there is already a levy included in the price of blank media and, ostensibly, distributed to "artists". The record companies have managed to argue that since you _may_ violate their copyright, you should pay in advance on the off-chance.
On the flipside, I've taken that to be a de facto license to copy whatever the hell I like, since I've already paid for the right, and do so with conscience unencumbered...
Here are the problems with a tax on internet to support copyright (which is what this amounts to):
(1) Most of the money comes from people who are not filesharing. So the many are punished for the deeds of the few. This is a bankrupt philosophy.
(2) You know very well that little if any of the money will go to the artists. So what's the point?
(3) It does absolutely nothing to solve the "problem".
The money comes from the wrong place, it will go to the wrong place, and it solves nothing. So what is this for?
I was under the impression that Canadians already pay a tax for their file sharing when they buy blank cd's? If they are already paying the tax on blank media why should they pay another tax at all?
This does sound better but they need to drop the media tax first and change this to opt-in. They also shouldn't limit it to music or videos but all digital media.
Let's go back to a control economy. Things were less interesting that way. Which is how the music industry does: produce un-interesting content.
Can't everyone just ignore filesharing. Don't they have better things to do like protect the children or something. If making music, tv, movies, books, photso or any other content no longer become profitable then people will just stop creating it. The world will go on, we'll find other way to amuse ourselves and filesharing will cease on it own. If there still money to be made then perhaps less or better content will be produced or new business models will emerge. Why pay $5 a month when I can get everything I want for free right now?
From one of TFAs:
---
Why the monetization of music file sharing is good for me if I am an Internet Service Provider:
Monetization will dramatically lower ISP bandwidth costs. Once file sharing is an authorized activity, ISPs can establish their own proprietary servers to service the bulk of file sharing activities. Since users would access the most shared songs on this "internal" system, it would lead to a dramatic reduction in the need for bandwidth to the world wide web, and a considerable cost saving to providers.
---
Yes, I can just see Rogers doing this in a responsible and fair manner. ~
Also, correct me if I'm wrong but it sounds like "sharing" is being dragged back into the 90's in this scenario - all the advancements of p2p out the window as we all connect to the approved legal internal download server to get our "most shared" music.
Download copyrighted stuff,
...and still get sued for copyright infringement by some artist that DID opt out of the scheme.
I bet it won't be like that levy Canada and many other countries charge on blank media - the levy that allows you to put any copyrighted materials you like on said media without the risk of being sued for copyright infringement, right? Oh, wait... someone knocking at the door... brb.
I worry that consumers won't be given the option to opt-out or in to this scheme, and it becomes mandatory. Then software companies, movie studios, book publishers will want their pound of flesh too and each demands a levy to be added to my monthly internet bill. Before you know it I'm paying $80/month for the same shitty, capped, 5Mbps DSL line.
Paying a flat tax on digital music and video would be much more convenient than what we have where I live, as long as it's not ridiculously high. And opt-out is definitely fine with me: they're actually liberating me from the paperwork necessary to opt-in! Again, this may only seem attractive to me and my compatriots, whose lives are often made miserable by monstrous bureaucracy and unavailability of legal online services most of the Western countries are used to.
How is this any different from signing everyone up for napster and then asking them to cancel the subscription if they don't see value?
In both cases, you get access to some, but not all, music and you pay unless you are savy enough to cancel.
... so what was it? I haven't found anything obvious in Google.