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!
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 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.
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.
Except that choosing the later would also make people move to other providers that don't try so hard or who have known loopholes. Either way, whoever makes the first move is going to lose out.
> 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.
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.
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
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.
If it was genuinely the artists who were getting the money I'd be quite happy to cough up the cash.
As long as such a massive percentage of what I might pay goes to the companies rather than the artists that create the work (composer, lyricist, performer) then I'll just stick with downloading.
Besides, I've already paid for most of my music twice already. Bought on vinyl or tape cassette and then replaced with CD. Why should I have to pay for it a third time to put it on my iphone ?
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.
...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.
"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."
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?).
Times change, business models must change to keep up with the times. There are many instances in history of new innovation "breaking" business models for industries, did we try to legislate that business model into making sense? No, the members of that industry either found a new business model or they slowly died out.
The entertainment industry shouldn't get any special treatment here, they have ignored new innovation and tried to pretend it wouldn't affect them. Now, when they have been left behind and their business model is falling to pieces are they adapting and trying to figure out a new one? For the most part they're just whining to the government and trying to place their burden on the public. Some artists have already found effective models without the large publishers involvements. Let those who refuse to adapt fail and you'll see that we don't need them for people to make art.
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.
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.