Slashdot Mirror
UK Royalty Group Wants ISPs To Pay For Pirating Customers
Idbar writes "A group representing British songwriters and composers will on Wednesday call for the introduction of a levy on broadband providers based on the amount of pirated music they allow to pass through their networks. Will Page, chief economist at PRS for Music, will argue at a Westminster conference that a piracy fee would better align the financial interests of internet service providers with rights holders at a time when the two industries are at odds over who should bear the costs of online song swapping."
Silly me, thinking that it should be up to the rights holder to protect their rights.
Leela: "Is all the work done by children?" Alien: "No, not the whipping."
Great,
If i'm going to paying a mothly fee for pirated music, i'll be sure to download my allocation's worth every month, after i've then paid for it then haven't i?
If this would mean that no further prosecution of end users would be allowed then this may not be such a bad idea. The levy would be passed on to consumers making our connections slightly more expensive but I'd pay more money to not be hassled about file sharing.
Which would be fine in principle if the PRS were the only game in town, but they're not.
So you'd have the PRS collecting their piracy levy from users (via the ISPs) and the BPI suing the same users (and ISPs if they can wangle it) for the same piracy, while doubtless also collecting a levy on blank media just in case someone puts some pirated stuff on it. Presumably if you then posted that media to someone the PRS would want to collect a levy from the Royal Mail for sending pirated stuff via the post.
That makes about as much proportional sense as a crazy local militia demanding the national army hand over all their tanks and missiles, because "we paid for some of those with our taxes".
However extravagant the audio media monopolies are represented - they're economically dwarfed by the telecom organizations. Their argument to shift the burden of, well pretty much whatever they can imagine, over to the bank accounts of the entire telecom industry is just absurd on its face, and isn't the kind of fight even a larger media ownership group could win.
It's one thing to ask for the moon, in order to settle for something else - but this seems a game they could get hurt for playing.
Ryan Fenton
My money is already stolen if I record the sound of my own band on my own CD. I don't need another theft if I want to let someone hear my songs on the net. Off course, the stolen money should go to the rights holder, but as a rights holder to my own songs, I never saw even a cent from it. And my songs have been played in public and broadcasted.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
This levy wouldn't actually make ISPs pay for this stuff; they'd either pass the cost onto the consumer indiscriminately, or work harder at filtering out pirate traffic. Choosing the former option when the latter would be possible would result in consumers deciding to choose other providers where possible, so there is significant incentive to filter pirate traffic.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
How will that money get distributed? Seems like it just necessitates dealing with the organizations that receive the levy.
Perhaps while they're at it they could pay for online fraud, substandard goods sold on the internet and child protection. Lets extend that so that transport companies, taxis, car sales have to pay a surcharge to cover people who are travelling to commit a crime.
Naturally, the fees will be turned over to the artists whose works are copied and rather than considering the copiers thieves, they will be paid in full.
HA HA HA...I crack me up!
I run an UK ISP called UKFSN and my response is that if they are willing to pay me the same proportion of the gross turnover arising from their activities I will be willing to consider their proposal.
I heard that GM got so big that they ceased to be an auto company and evolved into a finance company (and shortly after went bankrupt). SCO ceased to become a technology company and changed into a lawsuit company (then folded). Now Music is moving from selling records, to suing customers to becoming a tax collectors? The death throws of Big Music are clear and present. If I owned shares in these companies I'd be selling up while they're still something.
A difficult law to implement. How are they going to know how much pirated content travels by one ISP's lines? Even the ISP itself has no idea. Are they going to suppose that all bittorrent traffic is pirated content? What is the percentage of pornographic content? I assume that they don't represent the pornographic content providers, specially foreign ones. What about encrypted content? If they implement such a law I assume that the level of encrypted content will rise. There is no reason why all pirated content is not encrypted, except that it's at the moment not needed.
In the end they probably just want to get a fixed levy an all ISPs. And all blank CDs, DVDs, hard disks, memory cards, diskettes, memo pads, pens, photo cameras, and people with good memory.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Passing a 'levy' on phone companies regarding number of calls used to facilitate illegal activities.
Whether a data transfer constitutes piracy or not is just a guess.
Might as well increase road tax if there are more people speeding.
This is very (hauntingly) similar to the duty imposed on the sale of writable media in Canada several years back. This didn't stop the music industry bandwagon from attempting to cash in on a Canadian DCMA and various other tactics.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - of course they will not assume that you steal when you rightfully load or transfer content.
I make awesome song A. I then host "leaked" song A torrent on popular trackers. Copy all IPs. Sue users. Sue ISPs. Get pirating tax. profit.
I think the real issue as always is people are sick of getting ripped of for crappy movies and music. So they don't want to pay.
Also the FACTS that people bring up all the time is true.. most of the time it's eaiser to just copy a song/movie than obtain from the proper re-sellers.
I always laugh at the record companies trying to make people feel bad for 'downloading' but the average 20 year old who has little money and works at a basic job has no worries when a movie artist or song writer gets $10 million for acting in 1 movie or an artist making a spammy song or two -- a 'normal' person will never even make 10 million in their whole lives, and they work harder!!
So the REAL solution is for the music/movie industry to update thier whole model (which many people have said on slashdot).. so by just doing a few things such as; make downloading from THEM eaiser so people don't bother 'pirating'. Stop being greedy with prices, just sell music for 10c a song for general music, and 20c a song for new stuff, even 60c a song for the charts. But people expect a video music clip give them that option too.
In the end they can't do anything at all. Any nerd out there knows this, most people will just transfer files on their own private way, encrypted etc. If you try and kill torrants then pay pirate sites will boom... it goes on and on.
As soon as phone companies start paying royalties for drug shipments done over the phone.
Who pirated whose customers? (Yeah, I RTFS, but it's still an odd headline.)
Why is it that the music as well as the film industry is at the same time anouncing its imminent demise as well as posting increasing profits year after year? See the figures for Sony Entertainment Group on wiki for instance. Better than ever. Only EMI is in trouble, but that has different causes. Downloading has been proven in scientific studies to drive growing revenues from concerts and box office returns. Now this levy is a bad idea. They will force the ISPs to police their own customers, which is not a good idea. Either that or it will drive up cost for internet users that don't actually download copyrighted material. The internet is the driving force behind economic, social and political change. We need people to use it, so the economy can recover as fast as possible. We do not need new barriers that will prevent people from going online. When is the industry getting its act together? When will they finally stop prosecuting their best customers? I'm not holding my breath.
Assuming that fee is paid, and obviously I pay a portion of it on my broadband bill does that not mean that any material I download is in effect legal as I have licensed it with said fee.
So I can download Shrek 4 Bluray rip legally for a £2pm increase on my broadband bill.
I'd essentially get as much music / films etc as I want for a £2pm subscription
The trick of course is if X is the price of a retail copy and 4X is the fee per month then I logical need to download at least 5X worth of music etc per month to make it "worth while"
> ISPs that have knowledge
They can't have knowledge of infringement because only the rightsholder knows what licenses he has given. The ISP doesn't know that. Oh, and real infringement can only be decided in a court of law because of those pesky exceptions like fair use/dealing.
> or notice of infringement
Great, so we're in the DMCA-mode, where it's trivially easy to game the system because there is no real penalty for delivering a mistaken notice of infringement?
I work with digital sales accounts.
Every time you download a track from Itunes most of your money goes to, the government as tax (in the UK), the retailer (Itunes in this case), the distributor, and the label. The artist gets maybe 5% of what you pay.
Unbelievable but that's how it is.
Don't let these liars and crooks fool you into thinking otherwise.
...then presumably, it will be legal for me to download their clients' work, as I will already be paying for it.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
I am for this and when this new law is introduced so will another one. Were EVERY single artist will be locked up for life for the countless drug offences they are bound to commit on average.
Every performer in England will serve life for Mick Jaggers drug abuse. That is fair isn't it? If I have to pay for someone else downloading, why don't they got to do time for someone elses snorting?
But I know the real reason behind this proposal. The lawyer introduced, hoping that the people will have wasted their bullets on the entertainers before they can get busy on the lawyers.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Gee, I wonder how Slashdotters will respond to this idea? I'm sure it will be full of compassion and understanding toward the plight of these artists trying to get paid for their work. I look forward to an open-minded, emotion-free discussion full of fairness and brevity that represents all sides of the debate equally.
I'm off to feed my flying pig.
Tax prepaid cell phones since they are only used by criminals. Pre-emptively tax Visa gift cards, too. Put a prepaid levy on calling cards since only criminals use them. And put a huge tax on ISPs that tolerate Tor, because those people obviously are hiding something. It's 2010, and we don't have to hide anything from those who hate us for our freedom.
These guys are out of good ideas, they are trying to get something (anything) to stick so they can sue someone, anyone. I know nothing about UK law so I don't know if this will stick but it looks as if they are at their wit's end, not a difficult task by the looks of it.
UK will shortly see a tax on everybody to be paid to everybody for the stealing that the gov. does.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Look, we all know this is a ridiculously unfair idea - and PRS has history of promoting ridiculously unfair ideas (e.g. taking a car mechanic to court because having the radio on in their premises constitutes a "public performance").
But, it's their job to push for a world that's skewed towards the people they represent. It's the rest of the world's job to push back.
The best reaction is to say "well, you would want that", then say no.
I love paying for crap i don't listen to!
Meanwhile, i'll be sitting here listening to awesome artists online who do make the music for the sake of making music, and donating to all of them that i can.
I know this comment is off-topic but I really need to get this off my chest. Faggots must die!
... the queen of England is still going after Blackbeard...
You don't have to show a video of the bullet coming out of the gun and penetrating the dead person to prove that you killed them.
It's also just bare-faced cheek for the record companies, et al, to lobby for legislation that makes some other industry pay to shore up their failing business paradigm!
The ISP's should tell 'em to take a running jump!
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
In the past - and possibly still today - there was a levy charged on cassette tapes (remember them?) which was paid to some copyright group - the Performing Artists or something.
This wasn't terribly high, so was barely noticeable.
You could argue this would be a reasonable way to pay for content. It probably would not cost all that much.
Because somehow, someone, somewhere has to pay for making the content (movies cost a lot to make, no matter what technology they use). There needs to be a functioning business model somehow. Currently it's all rather nasty - buy my movies on DVD or I'll chase you, frighten you, and sue you. No fun (and watching "legit" movies is less pleasant because of all the "Don't pirate this movie" stuff at the beginning).
It's no good yelling "data wants to be free" - someone has to put the data together in the first place. And that someone, whether they be Madonna, Brad Pitt, Bill Gates - or me, deserves to be paid for their labour in doing that.
So where am I going with this? Well, the Internet has broken the business model of music, movies, and tv programs. Software and books are still hanging in there, surprisingly. You can argue they were bad business models, but they did work, and gave us some great works of entertainment (art?).
At the moment we seem to have the pirates on one side, yelling "We can copy anything and we won't pay you a cent", and the RIAA on the other yelling "We'll sue, we'll sue". In the middle is the great majority who are prepared to pay reasonable prices for decent content, but don't know how.
We need to pay for content in some way. A tax (scream, yell) on Internet traffic might be ok - it already gets charged for, so it's relatively easy to add a fee. Business would moan a lot.
But really, does anyone have a better suggestion? The world is waiting.
(And in case anyone cases, yes, I'd be happy to see a lot of the middlemen die out, especially in the exceptionally rapacious music industry. I'd be happy to see the actual content makers, the music writers, artists, producers all get paid a decent - even extraordinary, income. Sony, EMI, etc I am less interested in - they've done very well. Move on).
"Cats like plain crisps"
I do not download movies or music now, cause I think I should pay for it.
but.. if the forces ISP to pay, I will gladly download all movies and music there is.. cause then I have already paid for it.
So if the movie and record companies want to increase the download, then force ISP to pay up.
Sounds like iiNet (Australia) all over again.
There's only so much time in a day to listen to music. And most people play the same stuff over and over. More bandwidth doesn't mean they are getting more music; it only means a little less lag in the new music they get.
Clearly they are trying to position themselves to get rich way, way over proportion to the value they provide. Maybe they should just collect their fee from headphones and speakers. That would be in closer proportion to how much people gain from the music.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
"...a piracy fee would better align the financial interests of internet service providers (ISPs) with rights holders..."
Of course, the correct alignment of interests is ISPs and their customers. The IP-holders don't pay the ISPs anything, so it's a mystery as to why should they expect any services or fees in return. They can't accept that, so why not get their government cronies to step in and "fix" things. Nice servers you have there, be a shame if anything happened to them...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Silly you... It's not about giving money to the rights holders. It's about enriching whatever organizations put the system in place. Just ask any musician - even one reasonably well-known - how much money they receive from the fees on blank CDs. Then figure out how much money is paid. Then figure out where the difference went...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Their argument appears to be that ISPs don't currently think they should pay for copyright infringement... so to prevent this being a problem ISPs should be made to pay for copyright infringement, at which point their objections will go away. Does that actually make sense in any way?
...but then as an *HONEST* music fan who buys lot of CDs, I would like a refund of that tax that is offset against every CD that I buy.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Then we can make the NY Thruway pay for my speeding tickets!
...music companies should pay for all crimes committed, while listening to music.
Typical government reaction.
The children are misbehaving, according to the system, so punish the parents. If the parents are punished enough maybe they will attempt to do something about their children.
Coming soon. He's always yapping about how his content is being "stolen" and distributed on the Internet. So he can demand that ISPs be taxed for carrying his content, too.
Is there anyone else, who feels that ISPs are distributing their content, without them seeing a cent?
If this Music tax passes, the flood gates will be opened . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
You commit a driving offence on a privately run toll road. The toll road owners are now responsible for any damages you cause, no that you might cause
...they should sue the power company that supplied the electricity that made it all possible to begin with...
Actually they should pay the "file sharers" for distributing their music for free. The file sharers are giving these artists free advertising but they want money from them instead? Extortion at its best I say.
"Dear music lawyers. Following on your request that we should pay for illegal music downloads we allow to pass through, here is a detailed list of how much we allowed, which you will notice is empty. We 'allow' none to pass as we do not condone this practice, please find enclosed a fine payment cheque of zero dollars and zero cents. Love, the IPS."
Is there anything Lawyers won't try ? I just about spewed out all of my coffee laughing when I read this story... Arrogance and power, a bad mix indeed, but I think this time it's obvious to all that this attempt will go nowhere...
End of Line.
In other news, "A group representing British craftsmen and store owners will on Wednesday call for the introduction of a levy on the Department for Transportation based on the amount of stolen goods they allow to pass through their highways. Limey Focktard, chief economist at the Trades Union Congress, will argue at a Westminster conference that a thievery fee would better align the financial interests of the DFT with merchants at a time when the two industries are at odds over who should bear the costs of burglary."
Fine. Let them do it. I want my percentage of that "tax" based on the number of copies of software/music/images etc. with my copyright and without my permission that I believe are being passed through their connections too. I will back it up in exactly the same way that they do the arithmetic on their "industry losses" and then demand that money too. They will have to prove that I *don't* lose that amount of money due to the same piracy as they experience, or else I have to get my percentage, no matter how small. And when every artist hears that I succeeded, they'll all want *their* percentage and thus the tax will be going straight from my pocket back into my pocket without the music/movie industry seeing a penny of it.
Or they could just cut out the years of legal hassle and give up now. It's their choice.
2 ways this could be done
both begin by dropping DRM and allowing down/up/sideways loading
1 use the metadata to flag who and how much is to be paid
2 have a Media Clearing House Network that you can pay say ??50 every quarter for the right to download whatever from where ever (bonus if the MCHN actually hosts content)
Of course then the various Media companies would have to produce content thats worth paying for....
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
"a piracy fee would better align the financial interests of internet service providers (ISPs) with rights holders"
Translation:
"you be mah bitch now!"
There are other ways for citizens to be strong than implementing a monolithic state model.
Reply to That ||
If my uncle bought a painting in U.S. and ask my talented cousin to replicate the painting. After that, my uncle bring the replicated painting from U.S. to England through airplane. The airplane sold a ticket to my uncle, so he has the right to travel and carry whatever with him. And when my uncle get caught in England, the law will fine the airline company? I guess Internet is really a strange place.
Postal services should have to pay for the pirated stuff they deliver, maybe we can even sue them for the bombs they deliver and for the anthrax and other illegal goods.
We should also start going after the auto makers that create vehicles that are used to transport drugs, bombs, and other items.
This is the same reason many companies have to put so many limits on things their afraid of being liable and I for one don't blame them.
This is why life is beginning to suck, no ones going to offer anything of quality with freedoms.
Any service rendered with be extremely expensive and only good for minimal use, you will need insurance to surf the internet.
As noticed elsewhere in this thread, most musicians make their money off of touring, not from music distribution. Downloading amounts to nearly free advertising for touring bands, in other words.
Given this, the only reason for rights holders to think ISVs owe them anything is if those rights holders are the record labels. Record labels make money from distribution, not touring, so of course free downloads look like theft to them.
Pursue the thought to its logical conclusion, and you have another ripoff of the musicians by the labels: the ISVs get taxed by the labels for the theft of their property, and to make up for this they somehow figure out how to tax the artists for the advertising. Nifty.
So, tell me -- are they going to do the same for Federal Express?
If someone sends counterfeit Gucci handbags through Federal Express, will they fine the transport company?
Transport companies are not supposed to, nor should they bear the cost of, poking through every package that transits their network. That is true whether the packages are boxes or packets.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
There is NO cost to online song swapping. None, zero, zilch, zippo.
The only cost is in trying to prevent it. Since that's an action taken by the supposed rights holders, I'll call them rights stealers unless they are the artists who wrote, composed or performed the items in question, the cost is 100% theirs to pay.
Clear and simple.
to everyone they lied to. .. for every lie, everytime
-> Because politicians don't always tell the truth the damage the public by billions of dollars every few weeks. .. oh well, an becaus the can't tell what the want with just a few words but mostly talk for hours, the again waste billions of dollars ..
oh right, and copyright peanuts .. well, that's like 0.0001% of that .. so maybe we should prevent oil in saldas instead of the oceans .. looks to me as about the same type of problemsolving.
You'd have my vote.
Internet access is a right. If you make it significantly more expensive, you're impinging upon that right.
Are you worried about piracy now, really? why?
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Most terrorists used phones to plan their assaults and gather money to fund their operations, lets have the telcos pay for all the damage that is done that involved planning with a phone call.
The original paper is available online.
In a discussion with one of the authors, he makes it clear that they are not advocating a Levy, just considering its implications. Read the paper, and draw your own conclusions.
This has been blogged. Save yourself following the thread...http://bit.ly/bnLctl
They have to pay for the bandwidth and infrastructure to deliver the so-called "pirated" songs, so they are already covering it.
The copyright group is just a sad attempt at milking money off others. Oh the stupidity!
The issue is that you're paying for a license to listen to the music in a certain format; you don't pay for (or own) the music itself.
The problem arises when those whom hold the licenses see fit to exert extreme control over the what, where, how, when, why and who can listen to the music to which they hold the licensing rights - hence the RIAA's lawsuit against the RIO mp3 player (arguing against format shifting) and, earlier still, when Universal Studios et al. filed suit against Sony Corp because their intoduction of Betamax video recorders permitted time shifting, which was argued to be an infringement
It certainly appears that, when the methods used to distribute (and provide accountings for) licensed media start to slide towards obsolescence or irrelevance, the 'industry' seems to go through the classic stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.
I'll hazard a guess that the music licensing industry is somewhere between the second and third stages
I'm deaf. I don't listen to music. Why should I pay this "tax"?
There are many different kinds of rights you have and many different ways in which they get enforced.
The government does enforce criminal law all by itself, which involve some violations of your person or property. The government does not automatically enforce civil law; you need to take action yourself. If you don't take action, you won't get anything. And some of those actions don't even involve the government: you may have to submit to binding arbitration to get your rights.
Copyright and patents aren't even "rights" in the usual sense, they are temporary monopolies granted by the government. There is no reason in the world why anybody other than you should have to bear the burden and expense of making sure you take proper advantage of that temporary monopoly.
As long as the Royalty group agrees to pay to ISPs every time someone sees an ad for music or buys music online.
It's only fair.
Registered mail is guaranteed to be sealed; postal workers place stickers and stamps over any opening.
Making the ISP's pay is like fining the post office for delivering a nasty letter. Or fine the telephone company for conecting a call you didn't like. Not to mention the - how do you measure all the pirated data?. Between different protocols and encrypted traffic you have no chance. All this really shows if how out of touch the PRS is.
Maybe the gas-pump should be made responsible for the speeding driver (or the gas company in fact, but we pay at the pump?)
...not on "infringing copies". An important distinction.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Copyright (as in law) in the modern world is supposed to exist so as to allow those whom are engaged in the creative sector can profit from their creativity and thus earn a living from their endeavours
My sole source of income is from the work I do as an editorial and commercial photographer, so copyright legislation supposedly benefits me as it serves to protect my income from less than scrupulous entities whom would rather appropriate my work without compensating me
Of course the trouble with photography is that it's largely those who do have the funds and ability to legally license my work that are the most reluctant to "cough up" - even when caught red-handed
I do think that the RIAA and PRS are at best more than a little misguided in their efforts - and, at worst, they're practising corporate extortion.
I'll quote from Wikipedia article on Statutory Damages
"the original rationale for statutory damages was that it would often be difficult to establish the number of copies that had been made by an underground pirate business and awards of statutory damages would save rights holders from having to do so"
So: in pursuing individuals for damages of between $750 (minimum) and $150,000 (maximum) per work infringed, a person whom downloads a movie or song is being treated like a for-profit criminal gang
I believe that copyright legislation needs to undergo reform so that the penalties for infringement more appropriately reflect the scale and intent of the infringement.
Insurance companies are calling for a levy on city councils to compensate for claims from thefts in cities. They are arguing that since cities provide the infrastructure where thefts happen, they should pay for it. They claim that New York has agreed to pay 50 billion dollars a year for various criminal acts being engaged in by criminals in the city.
O this learning! What a thing it is - William Shakespeare
Musicians, by and large, get into music because they enjoy it. Present anyone with an opportunity to do what they enjoy and earn money from it and they'll be hard-pressed to turn such an offer down.
A few days ago, Techdirt ran a very interesting article about the way in which major record labels perform accounting for their royalty statements to artists. It makes for fascinating, if horrifying, reading on how artists get a very raw deal most of the time.
With that said, the answer still doesn't lie in piracy or copyright infringement, as the end result of that scenario will be exactly as the BBC article predicts: "...you need good musicians to create the music we all love and unless they are rewarded, unless they can pay the bills, they'll drift out of it"