Canadian Songwriters Propose $10/mo Internet Fee

BitterOak points out this Windsor Star story, according to which "Canadian songwriters are proposing a $10 fee to be added to monthly ISP bills, giving users a license to download music using peer-to-peer file sharing technologies for free, without fear of reprisal. The money collected would be distributed to members of a Canadian association of songwriters (SOCAN). The story doesn't make clear whether the license would apply only to Canadian music, or how musicians in other nations would be compensated otherwise."

Comments

Intl. Distribution

[rueger]

how musicians in other nations would be compensated

SOCAN (and most other country's performing rights organizations) collects foreign royalties for members of ASCAP, BMI etc through reciprocal international agreements.

So in answer, USian composers whose work is played in Canada still get royalties.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[ScentCone]

And so the Canadian government will just divide the money evenly between all musicians, everywhere? You do understand how absurd that is, right?

Re:Intl. Distribution

[iamhassi]

If this passes I'm so becoming I'm a "musician"....

Re:Intl. Distribution

[monkyyy]

i`ll write a 3 second "song" as a ring tone that will HUGE

Re:Intl. Distribution

[hedwards]

If only, it will almost certainly be divided up by SOCAN without anybody knowing how they're making the decisions and none of the artists having any idea as to whether or not their getting their fair share. Plus those with no reputation may or may not get anything at all, even if some people do listen to their work.

But on the balance this would likely be good for the unknown performers because it would likely open up a new audience, one which wouldn't likely pay just to sample.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[langelgjm]

The various collecting societies have data and estimates about how often songs and artists are playing, and royalties are distributed accordingly. This has been going on for years, it's nothing new. When it comes to downloading, they'll figure out a way to estimate whose work is being downloaded, and how often. It won't be exact, but it'll probably be good enough for them. Also, it's usually not the government, it's a private organization, albeit often with special privileges.

A better question about this proposal is whether it only prevents suits from songwriters... or are the performers and producers going to each want another $10/mo. as well? Royalties are split between a lot of different people, and they'll all need to be on board with any agreement like this.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[thrillseeker]

When it comes to downloading, they'll figure out a way to estimate whose work is being downloaded, and how often

what a way to make money - buy a script kiddie to plant trojans to download your music and send the traffic (and canadian moolah) your way

Re:Intl. Distribution

[jonsmirl]

About 5,000,000 Internet households. $10 month, $120 a year. 95,000 members of SOCAN.
That's $7,000 a year for each member of SOCAN.

I find it more amazing that 1 out 300 people is a SOCAN member. Does Canada really need 95,000 song writers?

Re:Intl. Distribution

[dgatwood]

But on the balance this would likely be good for the unknown performers because it would likely open up a new audience, one which wouldn't likely pay just to sample.

Unlikely. It would probably be distributed in the same way as royalties for audio CD taxes are, which means it's based on radio airplay counts. Translation: unless you're writing music for a major label, you're not going to see a cent.

That's the real reason the big music publishers want bullshit like this. It ensures that artists and songwriters will be forever beholden to the major labels. The songwriter organizations are playing right into the larger players' hands, and are basically defecating on the indie music scene.

For musicians as a whole, this law, if passed, will be a tremendous step backwards. By further institutionalizing the dependence on radio play and other highly restrictive channels, and by effectively reducing the value of sold music in Canada to zero (because you'll be able to legally share and download it for free), the proposed law would make it so that you can't make money with music except by teaching it.

In an era when the rest of the world is embracing the Internet as a great equalizer, Canada's law is threatening to destroy that---to eliminate the usefulness of the Internet as a medium for independent musicians to sell their music and make money outside the context of a major label. Frankly, any law like this is downright criminal.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[commodore6502]

>>>this would likely be good for the unknown performers

Why should I have to pay another $128 (taxes) just to listen to crappy pop music? Frak that. This is nothing more than Government tyranny to subsidize megacorporations (Sony, Warners, et cetera).

Megacorps == Dirty pieces of shit.
Let Sony and the rest of them die.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

About 5,000,000 Internet households. $10 month, $120 a year. 95,000 members of SOCAN.
That's $7,000 a year for each member of SOCAN.

I find it more amazing that 1 out 300 people is a SOCAN member. Does Canada really need 95,000 song writers?

You math is slightly faulty. You forgot admin fees, collection fees, disbursement fees, processing fees, lawyer fees, etc. Actual money to artists would be about $7 per.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

5,000,000 * $120 / 95000 = $6,315.89

To be eligible for SOCAN publisher membership, you must be conducting business in Canada with an office in Canada. You must also establish that you have been assigned either:

1. a minimum of five copyrighted musical works written or co-written by a SOCAN member or by a Canadian who is a member of another performing rights society
OR
2. the copyright in at least one song that has been commercially recorded and was written or co-written by a SOCAN member or by a Canadian who is a member of another performing rights society
OR
3. the copyright in at least one song has been included as a film or television cue sheet and was written or co-written by a SOCAN member or by a Canadian who is a member of another perfomring rights society

Eh? You can't even join without first bribing an existing member [either SOCAN or another society] to "co-write" a song with you?!?

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Kalriath]

Because the flip side is you could listen to cool indie music (and some not so cool indie music, but them's the breaks).

There's lots of downsides to proposals like this, but the main premise of being able to listen to whatever you want without a direct cost sure as shit isn't one of them.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[commodore6502]

Is they are so "good" at it, how come the Canadian artists had to sue in order to recover nearly 1 billion in unpaid royalties? (Their songs were used on greatest hits CDs, but the sales never credited back to the singers, writers, etc.)

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Interoperable]

That won't get you any money. You'll have to become a songwriter.

From TFA:

"But, the real problem is that SOCAN only represents songwriters. We are getting into the complicated way that music works."

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Interoperable]

Would that $120 a year even protect against lawsuits from artists who aren't members of SOCAN? Undoubtedly the majority of people whose music is being downloaded in Canada aren't members. How much does SOCAN expect the RIAA to charge? Then the MPAA will want in. I don't think an extra $40-$50 a month on my internet bill is a good deal for unlimited, legal, free P2P. (Then again, it would replace cable TV, netflix, last.fm, etc. Maybe it would be worth it.) Also, I have no doubt that at that point the ISPs would start demanding an additional fee for P2P traffic from someone because they would feel left out.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[therealkevinkretz]

"being able to listen to whatever you want without a direct cost"

And that "$10/mo Internet Fee" is better than your avoided "direct cost" how?

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

.

..the proposed law would make it so that you can't make money with music except by teaching it.

You mean musicians will have to make money by passing on the skills they learned for a fee; by selling tickets to live performances; by selling physical, branded merchandise or licensing such sales to third-parties; by selling commissions to write songs for others; by having a patron; etc.

rather than

using government to establish artificial scarcity of a non-scare resource in order to apply old business models to new technology.

Perhaps stepping back to the way musicians previously made money before the recording industry took over might actually be a Good Thing(TM) Perhaps it'll be harder to become a millionaire rock star that way, but the world might be better for it.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[davester666]

There's a couple of problems with the proposal.

1) This is just for songwriters. Performers and/or Labels would need a separate monthly fee on top of this [and significantly higher, because the performance is WAY more important than writing. Think about how much more the labels would want given that they only pay SOCAN 3-5% from the 'sale' of each song.
2) The movie industry is even MORE greedy than the above two groups. They would require an even larger fee than the label's fee.
3) If there were just the SOCAN monthly fee, people would think they are free to download anything and everything [ie, that it covers everything]. That's happening right now in Canada with the music-related taxes on various CD's, DVD's and tapes, which a judge ruled permits users to download music over the internet. However it doesn't cover movies or other things like games.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[pronobozo]

Canada has 28 million users, over 80% of the population(wikipedia). Also, it doesn't get divided amoungst everyone evenly, last time I checked you get "popularity credits" and based on the amount of credits, you get a higher percentage.

Anyways, this is the exact reason why I didn't sign up to SOCAN, I had a gut feeling they'd end up being some type of "voice" for all the songwriters, when really they should just act as the hub for collecting the royalties and getting them to me.

Even if I was signed up to SOCAN, how would they decide how many credits I'd get. From proven downloads? That'd be great cause I've had over 820,000 downloaded. But that wouldn't work because then it'd dilute the big winners, they wouldn't like that. What if my music was for free(because it is)? Would I still get credits?

First the UBB and now this... geesh.

Not all canadian artists are disgruntled and thinking they are "owed" something and feel the need to enforce a tax. With that said, feel free to download my music from my site pronobozo.com, maybe it'll help calm the nerves a little.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[sproketboy]

You forgot selling to elevator companies. :)

Re:Intl. Distribution

[commodore6502]

>>>you could listen to cool indie music

First off, I think pretty much ALL music is shit. It's really just noise to me - something to keep me awake. But otherwise: screw it.

Second:
I can do that now.
It's called youtube. Or shoutcast. I can listen to any radio station in the world, free of charge, and without any stupid ~$130 "piracy tax" laid on top of me.

I don't know. I wonder if some of ye would enjoy living in Dictatorial Egypt or former Communist Germany, the way you sit here and justify the ___ reeming government is giving you. ("Heh heh, yeah I love being taxed half a week's wages. Thanks guv'mint! Give it to me hard.")

Re:Intl. Distribution

[sourcerror]

In Hungary it works based on radio playlists.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[hairyfeet]

The problem is that you can listen to tons of indie artists for free without cutting the *.A.As and their ilk a dime. Most indie artists want you to go to their shows where they'll be happy to sell you a CD, a T-Shirt, a mug, hell with my band we even had keyrings because THAT is where performing musicians make their daily bread. We would even have a "pawnshop special" guitar we would play for a song or two and raffle off, each sale got you another shot at the guitar.

These kinds of "deals" only ensure the Titney Spears and other processed Chezz Whizz of music is kept at the top by their corporate masters, by keeping them getting the biggest piece of the pie. remember folks they FEAR you because they fear loss of control. They made fortunes by fucking artists and being gatekeepers to the masses (and as someone who has actually laid hands on a standard new artist contract I can tell you "ass raping" is too kind a description) and the net takes that control away from them by giving YOU power through indie net stations and word of mouth.

So don't give up what little freedom and power you have to the ever greedy megacorps. They have already committed treasonous bribery upon our elected officials to get truly insane copyright terms foisted upon the world, they fuck the artists over with "Hollywood accounting" every chance they get, they are nothing but blood sucking leeches on the ass of society and the world would be a better place without them. The quicker they die the better, don't give them even more revenue with which to screw you and the artists over.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[sourcerror]

Although we only have such tax on CD/DVD and flash memory cards. (see Artisjus)

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Rei]

There are lots of ways you can deal with this equitably. The simplest would be to distribute it proportional to their conventional music sales. There are other approaches that could be done, however -- for example, they could create opt-out or opt-in add-ons to be shipped with popular music players that collect statistics about who listens to what, and use that to weigh receipts. I think most listeners would opt-in, wanting the artists they like to be rewarded.

One neat thing that could be done which you can't do with conventional sales is that you could use a non-linear distribution formula -- that is, support small artists to a greater degree than big artists proportional to their audience (something like, "SharesOfRevenue = FansWho'veRecentlyListenedToThem ^ 0.5". To greatly oversimplify, if there were two artists, A and B, and A has 1 million recent fans and B has 10 thousand recent fans, and there's $1m to go around, a linear distribution would say that A gets $999,010, and B gets $9,990. Under the above formula, A gets 1000 shares and B gets 100 shares, meaning A gets $909,090 and B gets $90,909.. Artist A hardly suffers, but artist B can now live on their work.

I've long supported ideas like this, so I really hope it comes into practice. It's a way for new to allow new artists to truly make a living without having to contractually give away the overwhelming majority of what they earn to leaching record labels. Take the labels out of the equation, and it takes a lot total less money to give equal compensation to the artists. Also, it's a way to stop people who actually pay for and compensate artists for their work from having to pick up the slack for those who leach.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[multisync]

If this passes I'm so becoming I'm a "musician"....

I propose we charge everyone a $10.00 fee on their ISP bills for all the free tech support they receive from a relatively small number of geeks. To collect your share of the fee, you'd just have to produce an email from a relative saying they need help "downloading" their camera on to their iPod or something.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[severoon]

Man, this makes me mad. I proposed the same thing awhile ago, with the proceeds going to me, and for some reason none of the major news outlets picked it up. What makes this more newsworthy than my proposal?!

Re:Intl. Distribution

[afxgrin]

As if the equitable way to distribute the money is dividing it equally among members. Some musicians are clearly more popular than others, so they would get a larger cut, right? Considering their material is probably 'downloaded' more than others.

This whole thing is ridiculous. $10/customer for SOCAN, what next? $10/customer for the movie industry? $10/customer for graphic artists? $10/customer for the telecom union guys who maintain the network? I still find it appalling that the recording industry managed to push through the fees on mp3 players and CD-R discs. The internet one will NEVER fly.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Sir_Sri]

They already have some mechanism in place, to distribute royalties from blank CD's, and from actually sold items. Simply applying whatever algorithm that is to a bigger pot of money, and then letting artists wrangle with the body that handles that over their share of the compensation doesn't seem too difficult.

What it does do is create a serious problem for legitimate online music sales businesses (including apple). Since well.. I'm paying 10 bucks a month for unlimited already, what could I possible pay them for that adds much value? Unlike a CD, where I need to find someone with the CD arrange a chance to copy it, then give me my CD, then I have my CD. Online music stores compete directly with the piratebay. In that you can type in Music_I_want and within about 4 clicks have it start downloading, hopefully to the right place. CD vs Burned CD there's some potential value there (the actual album, a better quality physical disk, etc.), but it's pretty tough to add value to something that can be pirated trivially, as the music business has been learning to its peril.

It creates a legal headache, for example in the US, which, conveniently being next door and also speaking english we face this problem a lot. If a canadian P2P's files from an american, that's not illegal in canada. What do you do to the american? There's probably a messy legal framework here, can the US prohibit someone in its country from engaging in a legal activity in another, with whom there are friendly treaties. Music files aren't exactly state secrets.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[pspahn]

After I read TFS, I thought it seemed like an interesting and novel way of dealing with music piracy. I knew, however, that after reading some comments, someone would put things into sense and change my mind.

I do think it will be difficult for various industries to attempt to follow suit, but it seems likely that if this is successful we'll see similar fees for other things.

The increase in cost of Internet service just isn't going to fly for most people. I imagine the solution will be to begin providing ala carte type Internet service, which will probably make everything even worse.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

"And so the Canadian government will just divide the money"
Read the story. The Canadian government is not who is proposing this it is SOCAN.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[EdgeCreeper]

Um, as interesting as that concept is, the grandparent post is absolutely correct. As in creating a law which secures a monopoly for the encumbants while making it so difficult and unfair for anyone else to compete that it effectivly removes them is a downright terrible law. What about the other IP industries, why wouldn't they get in on the act? Would people now have to pay a Movies/TV/Newspaper/Whatever_else levy as well, just to use what is now a pretty essential service, whether they have any interest in those things at all? If that law somehow passes, of course they will try.

You mean musicians will have to make money by passing on the skills they learned for a fee; by selling tickets to live performances; by selling physical, branded merchandise or licensing such sales to third-parties; by selling commissions to write songs for others; by having a patron; etc.

Perhaps stepping back to the way musicians previously made money before the recording industry took over might actually be a Good Thing(TM) Perhaps it'll be harder to become a millionaire rock star that way, but the world might be better for it.

Except that the law only does this to the non-encumbants, while it would makes the encumbants life easier yet again, and it would force people with no interest in downloading music to pay a levy which does not help them at all, even indirectly. The only people who can benefit are the encumbant music companies and some people associated with them, and the heavy downloaders of the music of the said encumbants.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[eht]

Set up a server farm running popular music players playing only an artist the record companies have a very favorable contract (read that as ass raping contract) with, just spamming on it over and over, reporting "statistics."

Re:Intl. Distribution

[sodul]

I spend less than $10 a year on music and I do not 'download' it illegally either, why should I pay monthly fine ?

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

There are lots of ways you can deal with this equitably. The simplest would be to distribute it proportional to their conventional music sales.

How did anyone get passed this sentence long enough to mod interesting? Its the first damn sentence for crying out loud. If the slashdot community can't see the obvious retardation in this I quit. Seriously.

In case you missed it, I'm talking about the fact that this whole thing is about paying for media via a tax to compensate artists that have their material downloaded via non conventional means such as peer to peer. How anyone thinks using conventional music sales would be a good metric for this tax distribution is absolutely fucking beyond me.

I quote here,

Oh com on!

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

I want an ISP levy for all of my pictures that are downloaded by Canadians. We photographers should be supported by all Canadian internet users even if they don't happen to download our particular pictures. Obviously our art is more often downloaded than those cheap musicians so we propose a levy of $20 per month. Fair is fair after all.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets be clear: The money goes to SOCAN, not musicians. That's like giving money to the RIAA and expecting that they will make sure Ozzie gets his nickel.

And another thing, I never use P2P. I buy what music I have. That's just me and not a comment on what others do. So..... why should I pay? Just like the DVD/CD levy: I have over 100 burned discs in my home, none of which have music on them. Even if I was using DVDs to back up my music vault, why do I have to pay a levy for something I have already paid for?

Finally, $10 per month is enough of an increase to drive a lot of people on fixed incomes off the net. It sounds like a joke but it isn't. Internet access has become almost essential. Dial-up is not a real option in these days of bloated web sites and the proposed fee would almost double the cost of many of the "Lite" packages.

This is stupid.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[msobkow]

$10/month is obscene. That's 2/3 of a CD per month guaranteed income, no matter how crappy the product. I already have to pay a CD tax even when burning data CDs, pretty much forcing me to switch entirely to DVDs for burning because they're not subject to that damn tax. (A spindle of 75 DVD-R is $15, a spindle of 50 CD-R is $45!)

Re:Intl. Distribution

[swordgeek]

Good luck with that.

My brother is a full-time professional musician. He has been on at least seven albums that I can think of, one of which was nominated for a Juno. He has received *exactly* nothing from the tarrif on blank media. Nothing. Nada.
Celine Dione, one of Canada's top-selling artists, made a comment once about how she never saw enough money from the tariffs to make any difference in her income.

This will be the same, if it goes through. A cash-grab by the industry that goes to middle-managers, never artists.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[PsychoSlashDot]

>>>this would likely be good for the unknown performers

Why should I have to pay another $128 (taxes) just to listen to crappy pop music? Frak that. This is nothing more than Government tyranny to subsidize megacorporations (Sony, Warners, et cetera).

Megacorps == Dirty pieces of shit.
Let Sony and the rest of them die.

On the other hand, if I was offered the option of paying said $128/year for the utter and complete assurance that I cannot and will not ever be prosecuted for obtaining and using any and all music I can get my hands on, regardless of source, I'd absolutely go for it. For the price of no more than ten CDs a year I can - without any personal risk or moral compunction - open the floodgates and download anything I want?

Yes, please.

In fact, make it $20/month and let me download all the movies and TV I want too.

Simplifying the patronage concept is absolutely fine by me.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

The only "equitable" way to deal with this absurdity I can see is to have these "songwriters" register themselves at a designated site so that we (the non songwriter citizenry) could impose $10 surcharge on them every time they open their mouth to say something, anything or nothing at ll.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[chargersfan420]

Also, it's a way to stop people who actually pay for and compensate artists for their work from having to pick up the slack for those who leach.

Umm, what? That doesn't even make sense. If I legitimately support artists by buying their music, and also have an internet connection where I have to pay this fee, then I'm paying royalties twice. Under this idea, the "good" consumers get screwed the most.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Xeno man]

There are services that already do this. Go sign up for netflicks for unlimited movies every month. I'm sure there are music ones too. We don't need the government getting involved with the private music industry any more than it is.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Rei]

What part of "the simplest way" (followed immediately by an example of a less simple way) was hard for you to wrap your brain around?

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Rei]

I know this is about Canada, but in typical American fashion, I'll pretend it's about us.

A third of America opposed the Iraq war. We still had to pay ten thousand dollars per-person for it (via the WP's estimate of direct costs and economic damage of $3T). And you're complaining about ten dollars because you're one of an extreme minority of people who don't like music?

There's no way everyone will agree on every tax or expenditure levied by the government. But when it saves the majority of law-abiding citizens money while increasing individual freedoms AND encouraging content creation, I'd call that win/win/win.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Rei]

Why would you pay royalties *twice*? By paying the fee, you no longer need to pay for the music directly. It's included in the fee. That's the point of the fee.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[chargersfan420]

So then what exactly am I paying for in the store? Just the costs of the plastic? Would this mean that physical media would be cheaper? How much cheaper?
Also, suppose I have an internet connection at my house for a home-based business, which I use for reasons other than consuming content. How would this fee be fair to me?
What if I have two homes, and pay for an internet connection for each? How would it be fair that I am paying twice the fees of the next guy?
Clearly this idea hasn't been given a lot of thought.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[__aaaehb3101]

Actually it will most likely be distributed like the tax on all recordable media is. That is to say; it is not distributed, the money is collected and then SOCAN gets to decide how much if any of the money a writer gets which is usually $0.00(no money goes to artists or performers). There appears to be no public records at all; of how much money is collected and how much, if any is given out.
"Some money" is given to the writers(who are members) as determined by SOCAN's in-house system. None of this money goes to any performers; neither those with label contracts or independent musicians. This is just SOCAN once again trying to squeeze money from consumers since they couldn't get the Canadian government to extort money from the ISPs on their behalf. And it's one small step from having a voluntary system to having a mandatory system.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, we should make food free at the government store as well and just raise taxes for everyone else. This way there will be less money for the greedy Whole Food share holders. Canada already has universal health care so why not universal music care, universal housing, etc ... I think they've tried that across the bering sea, how is it working for them ?

Re:Intl. Distribution

[dgatwood]

Perhaps stepping back to the way musicians previously made money before the recording industry took over might actually be a Good Thing(TM)

You're kidding, right? There's really no difference between selling a recording of a performance and selling attendance to a performance. The only reason people didn't sell performances before the music industry is because recording didn't exist back then.

More to the point, to a large extent, access to free music online will dry up concert ticket sales, too. Unless it's a band you really like, why would you pay money to go hear them in person when you'll be able to download the concert the next morning from Bittorrent or whatever?

No, I really meant that the only way to make money with music in Canada will be by teaching it. In the long term, this foolishly written law will effectively end the ability to make money by performance in any form, including performing at live venues, with the possible exception of bars.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[guruevi]

I would be happy to pay a nominal, non-compulsory fee for unlimited, DRM-free media (monthly on a bill or yearly in my taxes). Surveys show that in the US we spend about $6/mo per capita on digital music and probably around the same for DVD's and rentals like NetFlix. This would be $12-15/mo and account for all my media downloads.

The industry is greedy but they can't sustain it anymore. Normal people don't have that kind of money anymore to go to the movies AND rent the DVD AND buy the DVD AND upgrade to BluRay. We've been making way less money when adjusted for inflation and still have been spending more on entertainment, there is not much left to squeeze.

As for 3 - the tax on the media carriers was introduced just for that and the **AA had been whining for it for years, they got it practically worldwide even in the US and several of those countries found that when you get money for something, you should be giving something back (which quite common outside the US a contract is not enforceable unless both parties benefit). However now they don't think it was enough and actually hamstrung themselves when the market moved on to computer media which was considered not to be included in the tax deal. They got their quick bonuses though.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit lets get you elected, you have to spread your sensibilities. People need a voice of reason, please continue.

There are lots of ways you can deal with this equitably. The simplest would be to distribute it proportional to their conventional music sales. There are other approaches that could be done, however -- for example, they could create opt-out or opt-in add-ons to be shipped with popular music players that collect statistics about who listens to what, and use that to weigh receipts. I think most listeners would opt-in, wanting the artists they like to be rewarded.

One neat thing that could be done which you can't do with conventional sales is that you could use a non-linear distribution formula -- that is, support small artists to a greater degree than big artists proportional to their audience (something like, "SharesOfRevenue = FansWho'veRecentlyListenedToThem ^ 0.5". To greatly oversimplify, if there were two artists, A and B, and A has 1 million recent fans and B has 10 thousand recent fans, and there's $1m to go around, a linear distribution would say that A gets $999,010, and B gets $9,990. Under the above formula, A gets 1000 shares and B gets 100 shares, meaning A gets $909,090 and B gets $90,909.. Artist A hardly suffers, but artist B can now live on their work.

I've long supported ideas like this, so I really hope it comes into practice. It's a way for new to allow new artists to truly make a living without having to contractually give away the overwhelming majority of what they earn to leaching record labels. Take the labels out of the equation, and it takes a lot total less money to give equal compensation to the artists. Also, it's a way to stop people who actually pay for and compensate artists for their work from having to pick up the slack for those who leach.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up.

The tone may be somewhat inflammatory, but the issue raised is fundamental.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Cerium]

Plastic? Physical media? People still buy music on physical media? :D

Seriously though, If I'm understanding this correctly, this fee/tax/whatever would replace the whole payment system for online music purchases. Yes, I suppose if you bought physical media, you'd be paying twice... but at least you're getting something tangible out of it.

For your other two scenarios:
You could always opt out and not pay the fee. Granted, the article seems to imply that it would be a painful process; but if you're looking to save that $10/mo, it seems to be a proposed option.

And if you have a home-business or two houses with two broadband internet connections, I'm pretty certain $10/mo is not really going to be a major concern. Maybe in principal, but, to be completely honest, if you were to complain to me about having to pay $10/mo more than I do for unlimited music because you have two houses, I would, most certainly, want to kick you right in the balls (or whichever applies here).

Re:Intl. Distribution

[RedACE7500]

We already can legally download music thanks to the tax on blank CD-rs. We don't need another tax on internet subscriptions to be able to download music legally, thanks.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Ihmhi]

There are lots of ways you can deal with this equitably.

That's the problem right there. The **AAs are all about keeping things as inequitable as possible.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd pay $80 extra a month to give me the right to pirate anything i want on the internet. Unlimited Movies, Unlimited Games, Unlimited, Music etc... But this kind of system would never work in any kind of circumstance. In that regard, this $10/mo. for music royalty is ridiculous.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[hankwang]

if there were two artists, A and B, and A has 1 million recent fans and B has 10 thousand recent fans, and there's $1m to go around, a linear distribution would say that A gets $999,010, and B gets $9,990. Under the above formula, A gets 1000 shares and B gets 100 shares, meaning A gets $909,090 and B gets $90,909.. Artist A hardly suffers, but artist B can now live on their work.

But if there were a 100 'B-class' artists for every 'A' class artist, then artist 'A' gets $500 k and each 'B' gets $50 k. And if, in addition there is a class 'C' consisting of everyone who has rudimentary musical skills (10 million videotaped children performing for their parents) have 2 fans, they can claim 1.4 M shares; the royalties will be distributed as $71 for artist A, $7 for each artist B, and $0,10 for each artist C.

I don't think that is what you want.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea- I agree. I think most users don't download music. I do go to movies though. However those movies are already being paid for and any song royalties are taken care of. I do download movies though. However it isn't right of them to force such fees on everybody. Most people don't download movies or music. It certainly isn't more than a $1 tax either if you tax every single Internet connection. A large number who do download movies and songs aren't using p2p or using other means which don't compensate. Legal services do exist online. Those who don't use services which compensate aren't getting any support either. I also probably should mention that of the legal services most don't even support my computer (GNU/Linux) and others. At the end of the day I'm against taxing the public to pay for something that isn't critical to everybody. Things that should be taxed should be restricted to things 80% of the population depend on. If we're going to tax the Internet pipe it better be going to public health services and other essentials we all need like hospitals, schools, water, sewage, roads, electric, public transportation, and similar. Not movies, music, games, or other entertainment etc.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Rei]

No, you do not have the legal right to download music you don't own in Canada, even with the tax on blank CD-rs. You simply get screwed over by that one. This is different.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Rei]

Want to talk about socialist policies? I think they've also tried that in Norway, how's that working for them? Two can play at the "Pick and Choose Socialist Countries" game. So let's ditch the red herring. If you really want to argue "Soviet Russia", argue that a music fee must inevitably be paired with communal land reforms and a planned economy.

As for food, could you please point to me where food can be duplicated at no cost, and the overwhelming majority of food that people eat is illegal duplicates? We're talking IP licensing, not tangible assets. A much closer analogy would be to basic research conducted by government agencies. We pay for it with our tax dollars, and all of the IP from their work enters the public domain.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Hadlock]

There was an article in the last month (here?) about how less than 10% of physical music album buyers make up 70% of the market. I haven't bought an album since 1998 (the radio meets my needs) and I only recently purchased a mog subscription, which I am still weighing wether or not I get enough value for it to continue. The mog subscription, which is basically what the canadian song writers are trying to push, already exists, and is profitable costs half of the proposed canadian system.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[grahammm]

Unlikely. It would probably be distributed in the same way as royalties for audio CD taxes are, which means it's based on radio airplay counts. Translation: unless you're writing music for a major label, you're not going to see a cent.

They could base it on the number of scrobbles recorded on LastFM and similar systems.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[SecurityGuy]

I'm no fan of the Iraq war either, but wars are thing governments do. Selling music is not. Mandating that I pay $10/month for music whether or not I consume or want it is simply wrong, and NOT a legitimate function of government. Bear in mind, the music industry is entirely free to offer YOU a contract whereby you can download any music you want for $10/month.

All of these proposals need an opt-out for people who don't want it and don't download illegally now.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Legal.Troll]

The idea of you positioning you and your random C-reel indie-band crap with, gasp, marketing brick-a-brac, as the lone alternative to Britney Spears et al is utterly laughable. Jesus just how did /. ever attract this crowd of people?

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm already there. I've changed my name by deed poll to Teh B. Tells.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

I spend less than $10 a year on music and I do not 'download' it illegally either, why should I pay monthly fine ?

I dunno. Its all Canada's fault anyways. Blame them.

I have the same question though.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Bert64]

Not only that but with guaranteed revenue, the encumbants would have even less incentive to produce a quality product. Expect them to scale back and produce garbage output as cheaply as possible in just enough quantity to ensure they still get their state handout.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[TFAFalcon]

So you're claiming there is no difference in attending a concert and buying a recording?

Then why do people buy tickets that cost many times the price of a CD/itunes download?

Concert attendance is not likely to change due to any laws governing downloads.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[scdeimos]

If you'd read the article you would understand that this isn't the Canadian government collecting taxes/royalties - it's a private business arrangement between various Canadian ISPs and SOCAN.

One of the many problems with this idea that you'll only be getting a license from SOCAN to download as much as you want without threat from them, but you would still be a target for CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association, representing the various recording labels) and any criminal/civil actions brought by the government.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Bert64]

They have a limited catalog, and their media is drm encumbered... Paying a flat fee for totally unencumbered legal content is what sounds enticing, not a crippled service that can get taken away at any time.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[rikkards]

Citation please.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[metacell]

But people do go to concerts, even though it costs ten or twenty times more than buying an album, so apparently, it provides something a recording does not. So far, independent studies have shown that illegal file sharing has a zero net effect on music purchases, for example, the Industry Canada report from 2007.

I do agree a blanket fee on Internet access is a stupid idea, though.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[cyfer2000]

I bought CDs, now I buy from iTunes, and I pay Pandora to listen without ad, and money goes to the musicians I like. In the future I pay $10 per month and I can stop buying from iTunes and stop paying pandora and my money goes to... whoville. It sounds more like loose loose loose to me.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[markdavis]

>"The simplest would be to distribute it proportional to their conventional music sales"

There won't BE any conventional music sales if it is suddenly legal and encouraged that people just download it all; and when people are FORCED to pay for music whether they want it or not.

Or what is left of conventional music sales would be horribly skewed by really old and/or lower-tech people that have no idea how to deal with digital media.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[hitmark]

Given that air time on radio is already a back room deal between big channel conglomerates and record companies, yes it will hurt the obscure ones. But that just means a new metric needs to come into place, one that is based on the system being managed rather then the system about to pull a dodo.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm... Wow.

You're right dude. Every musician should totally be cock-blocked from selling their own music on the internet. It's not like the internet is a modern place for the exchange of goods and ideas. It's just a series of tubes, right?

It's not like musicians -do- anything. Their only option in life SHOULD be teaching the C Major scale to 20 snot-spewing 3-12-year-olds every day. Recordings of music should be readily available... for free,.. to anyone who pays SOCAN $10 a month?

SOCAN is -notorious- for failing to pay out to the people they're supposed to. SOCAN just wants money for themselves -any- -way- -they- -can- -get- -it-.

They tried to levy fees on BUSKERS for heaven's sake. BUSKERS. How the hell is anyone supposed to make any money if they're even gouging the BUSKERS? "...Oh hi there mister hobo... You're playing a cover of a song that belongs to someone else. I'll be taking your horribly water-damaged guitar and whatever sense of humanity you have left as payment. "

This law -would- be a huge step backwards, and supporting SOCAN's endless thirst for misappropriated funds is always a bad idea. It's kind of like taking a bath in BBQ sauce before going to play with the velociraptor's kids. It's fucking stupid. It is stupid and you are stupid for believing it will help anything.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too... well... bit more than $10 a year but still, it's $120 (plus taxes!) a year...
but believe me, I'm gonna open the biggest MP3 server in Canada and distribute all the work and make a lot of money by receiving advertisement revenue and why not offering Premium Download Speed for a little $10 a Month?! :-D
I'm for the $10 a month! let's go, bring it on!!!!

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

National security (as defined by elected policy makers) and entertainment are not the same. It's the government's job to manage the former, but it would be a huge expansion to directly manage the latter (as in, having a direct hand in the revenue stream). Even if you disagree with the current copyright & patent regime, you must at least concede that the government is only imposing rules or constraints there, not *directly* doing wealth redistribution. Frankly, if one is willing to support "non-linear" revenue distribution formulas the give the little guy musician more than is directly proportional to sales, then you'd have to support similar ideas in writing books, researching science, etc.; all kinds of "little guy" fields that don't bring in the revenue but that somehow should pay more. Math & French professors, who earn a pittance compared to engineering profs, say, should earn more since they're still valuable to society. In other words, the market doesn't decide value, policy makers need a say. Fat chance of that!

Re:Intl. Distribution

[PsychoSlashDot]

There are services that already do this. Go sign up for netflicks for unlimited movies every month. I'm sure there are music ones too. We don't need the government getting involved with the private music industry any more than it is.

This is Canada. Netflix' offerings are sparse at best. Also, please review what I said and what this story is about. If I can obtain my music from any source I can, there is incredible value in that $10/mo. I don't care if the Beatles have stopped squabbling with iTunes or not. I don't care if Pink Floyd will offer singles or not. I don't care if an artist's work isn't offered for sale in my country. I don't care if purchasing a track can only be done with DRM. Instead I could do whatever I want, however I want, and what's available to me would be dramatically greater than what I could manage any other way.

To a degree this isn't about getting government involved. It's about getting law-enforcement uninvolved.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that charging people who do not download their music from the internet, but like to get their fixes the old fashioned way, they go to the local music store and roam around physically as opposed to virtually as in real world, isn't going to be a great idea and I for one if I was a canook would tell my ISP to go charge themselves.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[tixxit]

Keep in mind that SOCAN collects money for public performances; they represent artists, not the record publishers. Perhaps SOCAN won't sue you for playing music you download to your friends, but the various publishers probably still will. So, we would be paying $10/m to not be sued by the artists... but who worries about being sued by the artists? The big baddies are the record companies with the deep pockets.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

The lawyers would never allow it. They would block the musician from performing at all.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Some songwriters don't - or can't - perform music live due to the nature of the music they write. A good example is sample based music.

I've been thinking about this a bit myself, the only way I can see around this is for writers/musicians/whateveryouwanttocallus in this boat to stop charging for the music directly, and instead sell merchandise. It means learning a lot of new skills though, and there's the risk that most of the people listening to your music will never learn that you're actually doing this (eg, by not visiting your site directly, and you not showing up in amazon et al. search results).

Gonna be a tough nut to crack, that's for sure.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Jiro]

The need for payment is being tied to the acts of people, so it's legitimate to point out that some people do not perform such acts. If the Iraq war costs had been imposed on the public under the grounds that a few million Americans had helped put Saddam Hussein in power and that the government could arrest millions of "terrorists" but instead charged everyone a "supporting terrorism fine" as a compromise, you'd have a closer analogy.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you a word there

Re:Intl. Distribution

[rtb61]

Added to that new research has real added value. How much more bloody music do we need, there is already more out there than anyone can listen to in their lifetime. Do we actually need to promote the creation of more, do we not already have enough drunken drugged up minstrels to go around, do we actually need to create more and how exactly does that serve the needs of society.

Live music will thrive once the industry for dead music industry dies, has it not more than served any possible purpose and has it not in reality become more destructive than useful serving no purpose other than greed.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Xacid]

You know...I honestly wasn't expecting your music to be that good (because hell, everyone's a musician these days)...but it kind of hit the spot for me today. +5 points to good timing, sir.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Xacid]

I actually wasn't expecting much from your music (as everyone who puts a song on the internet can become a "musician") but seriously I was rather surprised. Really hit the spot with what I was in the mood for too - so thanks. :)

Also - good insight on the topic.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

$10/month * 12 months a year * 7 years (2003 to 2010) = $840. So, that's 8.4% of the per-capita cost you quote for the Iraq war. A small down payment, for sure, but not an insignificant sum either.

Besides, I *do* like music. But I already pay for it via CDs at the store, iTunes, or free music provided by the artists on-line. I don't download music that hasn't been licensed for download by the owner. Furthermore, I've paid the blank CD levy for YEARS even though >99% of the data I put on them is my own. Why should I pay yet more for a service I don't use?

No thanks.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this labeled as funny.

Its about the same idea.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[endymion.nz]

Really? My government manages to avoid starting wars, and is always giving grants to domestic content creators.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Xacid]

Frak, sorry for the double post. Thought the first didn't due to me missing the submit button after I stepped away from the comp. Kind of funny to see how I rephrased the second message from the memory of the first though. :)

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Post my f*** comment, /.

Or do you only allow posts that you agree with?

Original post: "Pseudocoded like a true socialist."

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Kalriath]

All depends how much you listen to in a month, does it not?

Re:Intl. Distribution

[elsurexiste]

I agree.

We argies paid the AFA a handsome amount of money, so the Gov. could transmit, through public television, all soccer matches for the upper leagues. I don't like that decision, because although I enjoy watching soccer, I wouldn't pay for it. I'm not even considering the fact that I don't own a TV nor I want to buy one.

BUT, I do recognise that soccer here is more than a sport, it's a cultural good (or should I say cult? ;) ). So, the state may have an interest to broadcast the most popular games to the general public instead of limiting them to people who can pay good bucks to their cable , in the same way that it has an interest to keep museums opened and artists with food on their plates.

So, we come to this question: Is music just a form of entertainment, or also a cultural good? And, if it's the latter, why wouldn't we want to subsidise culture? Even people who pinky-promises that they NEVER hear music benefits from it, in the form of people interacting with them in a better mood, for example.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[extraordinaire]

There is nothing that makes me sicker at my stomach than to listen to/read how a true socialist would "equitably" take one large group of people's money away and give it to another large group of people. The goal of society is not to ensure that Artist B can live on their "work", or to assume/surmise how harmed Artist A would/wouldn't be by robbing them of their earnest reward and distributing it according to how society and politicians would see fit. It sucks, I know, but to make an attempt at "living" on an artists work is a fool's game. It's called "work" because it's not fun. If work were fun, you'd hear people talking about "going to fun", but instead, you hear them talk about "going to work." There is a reason for that. If an artist can live on his/her work, he/she got lucky, plain and simple. If artists don't do it for the money, then let them get a job and pay for their own bills, and then promote independent forms of distribution. Note, I'm not suggesting that the government promote this, I'm suggesting that *you* promote this by being the guy/girl who buys from independent sources, and who only buys from independent artists. Don't buy from major labels. "The simplest" way of dealing with this equitably is to promote private / independent forms of distribution, or even sources like iTunes, rather than having everyone pimped out by the music industry to begin with. Yes, Steve Jobs is getting rich off of iTunes. And Jeff Bezos is getting rich off of the Amazon Publishing Marketplace. But these guys are creating careers for people who publish their work independently, and never seen agents / contracts / labels etc. This entire concept that you've relished over is pure Marxism disguised as a "solution" in search of a real problem, which doesn't exist anymore to begin with.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[extraordinaire]

I don't think that is what you want.

The fundamental problem with socialists is that they are poor mathematicians.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[therealkevinkretz]

It is for people who spend $10 or more every month on music they could a)download and b)belongs to SOCAN. It's not - and grossly unfair to demand - for people who don't.

It's still a cost, and that it's one not directly associated with the actual use of the product it's charging for is less fair, not more, IMO.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[levi47]

Fly, no. But he can leap over tall buildings

Re:Intl. Distribution

[dgatwood]

More to the point, it cannot be based on any sort of sampling technique. It must be an exact count. Otherwise, those with small download counts become rounding errors and get nothing instead of something.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Easy2RememberNick]

It's not a tax it's a levy, all the money goes to the artists (yeah right) not the government of Canada.

  I don't get why music and movie companies most from the USA get to dictate Canadian law for the benefit of those foreign corporations, there are a lot of other companies in the world other than those types.

  How about the record companies wake up and realize it's not 1990 and things change, roll with the times, a CD with one "good" (autotuner'ed to death) song isn't worth the plastic it's on. They should set up an entirely new method of distribution, even something other than iTunes (I don't use) or whatever else is out there.

  This sucks more because as I hinted most music sucks these days or it's because I'm now 41 or both but I'm not paying $10/moth so Justin Bieber can get a new haircut.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Graham J - XVI]

Here here!

Re:Intl. Distribution

[methezer]

And so the Canadian government will just divide the money evenly between all musicians, everywhere? You do understand how absurd that is, right?

No. They give it to SOCAN who then determines how much to give each musician based on some sort of voodoo. Essentially they are asking ISPs to pay royalty fees the way that radio stations, restaurants, theaters etc. do.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Monopolies don't provide equitable services or terms. Democratic conditions don't alleviate this problem, due to rational voter ignorance, perverse incentives and coercive power, and the impossiblity of socialist calculation (see Hayek, Mises).

Hmmmmm......

[Donniedarkness]

Hmmm.......

No.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[betterunixthanunix]

Actually, I would not have a problem with this...if it meant that nobody could be sued for downloading. Paying a tax that goes to artists (or recording companies, but at least there is some path toward music production there) and being allowed to download music as I see fit sure sounds like a good deal to me.

Of course, we know that is not what is going to happen (now you are going to pay and still get sued), so yeah, no deal.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[isopropanol]

Hmmm... Cable internet here is ~$30/month (depending on plan)... do they seriously think that 1/3 of bandwidth is used for downloading music? I certainly don't think so.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[MoonBuggy]

I don't think they'd be stupid enough to keep trying to sue - the major labels would be more than happy to have a guaranteed monthly income stream from essentially everybody in the country. I also don't doubt that labels would also graciously offer to take the job of passing the money on to the artists who deserved it, less a reasonable fee for all their valuable services, of course... Oh, and good luck getting any payment if you aren't signed to one of those companies doing the distribution.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[Sancho]

Only I have no interest in downloading music, so the tax does me no good.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[Donniedarkness]

I have no problem with money going to artists.

However, I do have a problem with them getting money when I'm not using their content. I do not wish to pay for my neighbor's teenage daughter's music addiction.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[Anonymous Coward]

What about all the photographers, videographers, authors, and other members of the creative arts? I think we should levy a $10 tax for each of the aforementioned disenfranchised groups to recover their lost cost due to the internet. It would only be fair.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[iamhassi]

I have no problem either, we should all pay for our music on iTunes and then pay an extra $10/mo to... wait, I already paid, why am I paying again?

But I don't think it should stop with music! What about that copy of Office you downloaded? We should all pay $XX/mo to the BSA (Business Software Alliance... not boy scouts) for downloading programs.... also remember the MPAA needs their $XX for the movies.... and the Entertainment Software Association needs their $XX for those games you download.... am I leaving anyone out? Music, software, movies, games... PORN! We owe the Adult Film and Video Association of America a TON! $XXX/mo sound alright? Ok so your monthly internet bill is $1,800, we offer a convenient payment plan of only $20 charged three times a day...

Re:Hmmmmm......

[Imagix]

Are they also going to provide the locations to which Canadians can download the content that they are thus legally purchasing, with no DRM? (What do you need the DRM for, the entire population may download at will...) And at reasonable bitrates?

Re:Hmmmmm......

[Anonymous Coward]

And comment writers. Sometimes someone's comment gets copied by someone else. They deserve compensation.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[gstoddart]

Actually, I would not have a problem with this...if it meant that nobody could be sued for downloading

I sure as hell would.

I buy a lot of music on CD, don't down muskc, and I'm sure as hell not willing to pay a $10 monthly 'tax' on my internet connection so these greedy bastards can double-dip. I can guarantee, the artists I'm listening to don't get paid for in this scheme.

If they introduce this, I'm going to download so much &%^$*() music it's not even funny. They're already charging me a 'levy' on blank CDs -- if this comes in, and it's not optional, then I'm getting my moneys worth and downloading a shitload of music.

Taxing everybody's internet connection to pay for the proportion of people who actually download is bullshit. If you want to be able to voluntarily pay it, go ahead. But making it mandatory for everybody is a friggin' bad idea.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[ChromeBallz]

Of course, that's the rub with this kind of plan. Still, a media tax on internet services would solve everyone's problem, $5-10 depending on the service you're already paying for. You could argue that people who don't download any media at all shouldn't be paying this, but that would raise a lot of technical issues which would get into big brother territory - Besides, bandwidth limits would take care of things like that.

Of course, this should also mean that things like iTunes would have to get cheaper aswell. A lot cheaper.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[md65536]

I have no problem either, we should all pay for our music on iTunes and then pay an extra $10/mo to... wait, I already paid, why am I paying again?

Yes, but many people will download their music for free. You have to share in paying for that, too.

If they raise my internet bill $10 per month, I will probably cancel my internet service. This is a loss of business for internet providers. They will have to raise it another $10 to make up for that.

am I leaving anyone out?

Yes, me. I run a carrier pigeon messaging service, delivering any message within a 100 km radius within a week. New technology has reduced my profits, and therefore new technology should be taxed so that I can maintain my previous profit levels despite my obsolescence.

This is Canada dontcha know. The profit of the capitalist market system is a social program here.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

As an Option, such an offer would be relatively attractive(the history of IP, particularly culture-related, contains a fair few instances of compulsory licensing along standardized lines). If, however, it isn't optional, it's just a screwjob, amounting to the assumption that 100% of internet lines are used for "piracy" and that musicians deserve the right to tax everybody.

(The slightly subtler thing to also watch out for, of course, is the downloading/uploading distinction: if this fee only protects you from copyright infringement suits for downloading, the labels are still entirely free to harry the uploaders, without which the right to download is rather useless. Long term, you could then end up paying $10/month by compulsion and paying another fee to some entity that pays yet more to serve as a download provider without legal harassment. Worst of both worlds. If you are going to establish a tax on the premise that "pirate" mode distribution is the inevitable future, that is one thing. If, however, uploading is unprotected, that basically still gives you enough leverage to stomp on bittorrent users and any distributors who aren't also paying you royalties, which would basically mean that everybody is paying an extra $10/month just to be able to use the existing legally licensed online stores. Wow, what a deal...)

Re:Hmmmmm......

[LordNimon]

The $10 is not to cover bandwidth. It's to cover the cost of the music that you're downloading. They're saying that people would normally spend $10/month buying music if it weren't possible to "pirate" it.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[commodore6502]

I only pay $7 for one service, and $15 for the other.
They going to tack another $20 each month???

Fuckiong bastards in the fucking government. Let's do to Ottawa what happened to Nicolae CeauÅYescu, his wife, and his cronies.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[houghi]

Newsflash: The money is NOT going to the artists.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[commodore6502]

Frak that.

It's about time the writers, artists, etc become hourly employees just like all the rest of us (engineers, programmers, printers, tech document creators, ...). Pay them $30/hour for their work and done. No more free ride beyond that, no 200 year long cashcow that supports their great-great-great grandsperm.

I'm sick of these creative types thinking they are better than ME and the job I do.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[MichaelSmith]

I don't download music but I do download free porn so I suppose it would make sense for some money to go from me to subsidise the pornographers don't support.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[houghi]

Please also seed after you download, but most likely THAT will still be illegal and that is who they will still go after and sue.

So this is what will happen:
1) 10$ per month is extra you pay
2) All up loaders will be prosecuted as that is still illegal
3) Only pay sites like iTunes will offer it for money
4) Profit (X2)

Re:Hmmmmm......

[Interoperable]

If the plan was opt-in, it would almost make sense. Either plan on buying through legitimate channels or pay the lawsuit-insurance fee for whichever organisations have the copyright for the material that you plan to pirate. Only pirate TV? Just pay the MPAA monthly fee. That one will be at least $50/month I bet.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[camperdave]

I don't download music. I download video. Where's my protection? Does that $10/Month go towards that, or is the CMPDA going to add their own $10/month charge?

Tell you what. Open up an online subscription service for $10/month, serve up your music there and leave my connection costs alone.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[TheGratefulNet]

agreed.

our software is just as much art (or more so) than most popular music.

they seem to think they deserve a cut of recurring sales. do YOU, mr software guy, get a cut of your co's software sales?

no. in fact, you keep your job a few years, get outsourced and then have your healthcare cut from you shortly after that.

pay us both 'for past performances' or pay us both per hour. stop with the 'artists deserve regular royalties'. they don't. we don't believe that and we have voted with our torrents. you can hear us or not, but we have already decided this.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[bill_mcgonigle]

If the plan was opt-in, it would almost make sense.

That's called Rhapsody, right?

Re:Hmmmmm......

[corbettw]

Not only that, it'll kill CD sales. Why would anyone, anywhere, ever buy a CD again if they're already paying $120 per year for this? Might as well get your money's worth and download everything you can. To do otherwise would just be foolish.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[Kjella]

That not the biggest issue, in theory the total cost could remain the same whether paid by itself or tacked onto the ISP bill. The problem is that someone will order the lobster dinner with champagne and pay just as much as the one having a light salad and a glass of water.

A movie buff would love it, it's likely to be cheaper than what he used to pay. It's everybody else paying for it. Same with everything else, just load up on Windows 7 Ultimate, MS Office, Photoshop CS5 or maybe the entire Creative Suite - after all it's "free". The more you download, the better value you get for your money.

Likewise a bunch of students sharing a house would love it, cost spread across them is minimal, same with a big family. If you're single, you are subsidizing them.

The only good thing about it is that it'd bring copyright crashing down worldwide, because all the servers would be put there and even if they add some restrictions people will VPN in there. Even though sites like TPB operate rather openly, it would be completely different to have an officially legal P2P service.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[Totenglocke]

Except for the people who have no desire to download music and just get stuck paying $120 a year to subsidize everyone else.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[Lawrence_Bird]

So you have no problem stealing $10 bucks from those who don't steal music or movies over the internet?

Re:Hmmmmm......

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be stupid. They'll instead hunt down every single upload source they can find and crush it like they're trying to do now anyway. Just because you get fucked over by paying a "download fee" doesn't mean they have to provide an actual download service. They want you're money, they don't want you to have what you're forking it over for however. They still want you to buy the CDs.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[Interoperable]

No, but it serves the same purpose.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[EdgeCreeper]

Except it only cements the encumbants position, see dgatwood's excellent post.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also likely you currently have no need of the medical system, so your taxes do you no good. Also, the outlying roads you don't use? No good there, either.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[Chaonici]

It's arguable that access to healthcare and access to public roads are both in the public interest to be provided by the state.

Paying record labels? Not so much.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[johncandale]

Don't be mad they have a better union. They are not overpayed. You are just under payed

Re:Hmmmmm......

[ne0n]

Would you object if you were deaf? How about if you didn't bother to download music that%s not in the public domain? This tax is a terrible idea.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[bill_mcgonigle]

No, but it serves the same purpose.

Right, so they can either force everybody to buy Rhapsody, or they can set up a competing service, force everybody to buy that, and crush Rhapsody Canada. Effectively, a nationalization of the music business.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[dishpig]

It's about time the writers, artists, etc become hourly employees just like all the rest of us (engineers, programmers, printers, tech document creators, ...). Pay them $30/hour for their work and done.

This is borderline retarded.

First, there is no barrier of entry for creative artists. There is no accreditation for writers, painters, photographers, songwriters, etc that is necessary to practice. Can the same be said for engineers, programmers, etc? Can anyone do your job? No. Agreeing to pay anyone $30/hr to write without a formal approval process - how's that sound to you? Stupid? We're in agreement then.

Second, they are creating something with an intangible value. Engineers, etc, all create something with a tangible value, something that - if it works properly - can be measured as worth x because it fulfills a specified need. You are hired because you can produce code or documents or whatever as needed. But so can anyone with the equivalent, measurable skillset. Like it or not, you are to a large degree interchangeable with a thousand others.

A well-written song or novel has no such guaranteed value (it may have no interested audience). Nor does a successful songwriter or novelist (his next work be awful). Nor are the artists interchangeable. This kind of creative work is done on spec because you're only as good as your last piece. And even if what you create is amazing, there's still no guarantee that anyone will be interested.

Can the same be said for a programmer or engineer? If your last project didn't work out, does that mean your skills are in question, your perceived worth gutted, your ability to make a wage practicing your profession gone? Of course not. Your product (code, documentation, etc) has a market even if your current project flops. You still have your measurable skills and the failure wasn't completely yours (giving you the benefit of the doubt). Your profession is collaborative in a way that it isn't with creatives. Songwriters, authors, etc are in control of the entire process in regards to producing a product. Sure, there are session musicians and sound editors etc, but these are paid help. Creatives do everything on spec. If someone takes all the risks, why shouldn't they get all the benefits when it works out well? If you come up with the idea for, and proceeded to write, a piece of code that's worth millions to the world on your own time, wouldn't you expect the same? Yeah, I thought so.

As for the creative types thinking they're better than you, how do they express that exactly? Do they kick sand in your face? Sleep with your girlfriend and brag about it? Laugh at your unicorn poetry?

All that said, I'm completely for this idea. You work it so I get paid $30/hr to write spacegun krazy krazy robot smut novels. I also play the kazoo at an expert level, so I might moonlight to make some extra dough.

No.

[Sarten-X]

As someone who simply doesn't listen to music, pirated or otherwise, I'm going to go with "no way in Hell".

Re:No.

[ToadProphet]

It appears to be opt-in. So if you don't want to have a 'license to download', you don't pay.

It doesn't seem like a terrible idea, though I'd need to see a few more details.

Re:No.

[Baron_Yam]

I'm in a similar boat - I listen to the radio if one of my coworkers puts it on, otherwise I very rarely listen to my 70s and 80s stuff that I probably purchased more than 20 years ago (though have since digitized, of course).

Basically, fuck them. With rusty barbed wire. Rectally.

Re:No.

[QuoteMstr]

I'm not sure whether you should be so quick to dismiss the proposal. Rampant copyright lawsuits hurt everyone, not just those who download.

Re:No.

[sharkey]

Rampant copyright law hurts everyone...

FTFY

Re:No.

[Zenin]

I listen to the radio if one of my coworkers puts it on,

BZZZT! Your company must ASCAP for a public performance license if anyone at your work is playing a radio that can be heard by anyone besides themselves (your office is not a "a small circle of a family or its social acquaintances"). If that isn't acceptable, listeners are welcome to use headphones.

http://www.ascap.com/licensing/licensingfaq.html

Re:No.

[martin-boundary]

Oh please.

Do you really want to pay $10 for downloading songs? You know, even if you don't, it's because everybody does it. How about an extra $10 for downloading movies? It makes sense, everybody does it. And an extra $10 for downloading pirated Microsoft software? There's studies about that, you know. And an extra $10 for ebooks, let's not forget the publishing industry.

The internet surfing population does not owe artits a living. The world has changed, and (music) piracy is here to stay. It's time to reinvent business models so they don't depend on stopping copyright infringement. Adapt or die.

Re:No.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'd be very careful to see how it treats "uploading". Unless it very specifically protects that as well, it essentially changes nothing for any user of common p2p setups. If it doesn't do that, it is basically a scam, because the right to download without legal threat is rather useless if nobody has the right to upload without legal threat. Everybody already has the right to purchase downloads from entities that have licensed the music in question, so paying more for that is absurd, and a p2p setup that consists entirely of leeches isn't all that useful.

Re:No.

[houghi]

Digitized it? So you admit of being a pirate by *AA definition.

You should have bought the album, then the 8-track, cassette, Lazer Disc, DAT tape, CD, DVD and now BlueRay and obviously a different version from iTunes for each and every digital music device in your household AND must not let more then 4 people listen to it, nor play it in a commercial environment.

Re:No.

[therealkevinkretz]

so ... paying off the a-holes filing the suits is good and fair? Sounds like not too many steps removed from a mob protection scheme, only with a guaranteed (government) collection agency.

Re:No.

[Baron_Yam]

You missed that despite only purchasing a license to listen to each format, thou shalt not expect replacement media for free, nor shall thou backest up thine licensed music.

Since I've moved from tape to LP to CD, I've probably got triple listening rights to much of my collection. Of course, the tapes long ago wore out, and with the exception of my Star Wars and Beethoven my vinyl fell victim to poor storage and sunbeams, and the CDs died deaths of a thousand scratches.

I probably couldn't prove I actually own ANY of my digital music, unless my wife has the old media in a box somewhere. Now that I think of it, 20 of my mp3s are courtesy of a dl coupon that came with a couple of flash drives. Those ones I wouldn't even have a hope of proof.

I revert to my rusty barbed wire position.

Re:No.

[grumbel]

Two problems with this proposal:

1) It only covers music, are we going to have to pay another charge for videos and games? What about books, etc.?
2) Who decides how the money gets split? Would the money go to a big music cooperation even so I want to support Joe indie musician?

A more interesting system would be something like Flattr, where the $10 go into a pool that you yourself can then split and direct to the people you want to, but I doubt that'll be practical.

Re:No.

[dryeo]

The Canadian courts have handled the making available argument the opposite of the States. As I understand it, if I have a FTP server with a bunch of music on it and you download from it, it's your action and legal. If I upload to your FTP server then I'm distributing and it's illegal.
So all the people who want to share is make available their collection and as long as the downloader initiates the download it is legal.

Re:No.

[dryeo]

This is Canada. The Supreme Court has consistently interpreted our right to not have unreasonable searches as actually a right to privacy. Because of this the *aa's have a really hard time getting enough info to start a law suite. So basically there are no lawsuits.
Of course there is an updated copyright law working its way through Parliament and will pass barring another election which will change this.
Only reason I hope for a another election, so the copyright bill will die like the last 3 versions did. (All bills before Parliament die when Parliament is dissolved and with a minority Parliament all it takes is a money bill to fail to force an election).

Re:No.

[metacell]

Please mod parent Insightful.

Re:No.

[elronxenu]

Videos: $10/mo.
Games: $10/mo.
ebooks: $10/mo.
Software: $10/mo.
Music scores: $10/mo.
Scientific papers: $10/mo.
Recipes: $10/mo.
Knitting instructions: $10/mo.

There's an endless variety of types of copyrighted work. Paying a blanket fee for "music" only sets up the situation for the next type of content owner to demand their tithe from all.

Disney: $10/mo.
WB: $10/mo.
Sony: $10/mo.
CNN: $10/mo.
FOX: $10/mo.

Don't think these megacorporations won't want their own guaranteed slice of your assumed piracy.

IFF it's *NOT* mandatory

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll buy into it IF AND ONLY IF it's not mandatory.

Otherwise, frankly, they can fuck off.

We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[tomhudson]

They negotiated a levy on all blank CDs long ago, for this same reason.

This is double-dipping.

Better idea - why not make it a levy on iPods and other music players. Why should I have to pay a royalty when I don't download music?

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[Kenja]

You pay for blank audio cds. Does anyone really use those?

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[Platinum Dragon]

I think this was actually floated here in Canuckistan early last decade. It never made it into a piece of legislation; it's effectively a tax on any computer with storage that plays music, whether it's a little $50 flash-memory player with cheap plastic buttons to $3500 laptop gaming rigs. There's no hope of equal enforcement, and either the loopholes would be massive or the entire industry would smash it down before it could ever be legislated.

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[hedwards]

Depends, do they still make those stupid CD players for component systems that can only write to audio CDs?

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[91degrees]

Been years since I bought a blank CD or DVD. I have about 30 DVDs left. At current burn rate this will last me a couple of years.

Unless this is really atypical behaviour, they're not getting a lot of money from blank discs.

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[Mashiki]

I'd call it closer to triple dipping. They got years of cassette fees, years of CD fees, and fees from other sources. Fuck'em.

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

This CD tax happened in spain but turned out to be ilegal according to the european laws.

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[tomhudson]

Been years since I bought a blank CD or DVD. I have about 30 DVDs left. At current burn rate this will last me a couple of years. Unless this is really atypical behaviour, they're not getting a lot of money from blank discs.

Which is why they want to get a constant stream of revenue from your internet connection. It's even better than selling you a CD, since they get a constant revenue stream, with no production cost to them.

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[tomhudson]

My mistake - the levy is on ALL CDs, not just the "audio" format ones.

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[tqk]

You pay for blank audio cds. Does anyone really use those?

Yeah, I burn one every month. Or every month and every LiveCD I download.

Music CDs, no.

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even Better idea. No.

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[houghi]

Belgium still has it. Not enough people that complain. :-(

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Better idea - why not make it a levy on iPods and other music players. Why should I have to pay a royalty when I don't download music?

In Germany we have such a levy on CDs, portable music players, harddrives, etc. We're not allowed to download music though. These fees are one of the reason why I have absolutely zero scruples downloading music. The music and publishing industry steals my money with the help of their lobby organisations and corrupt politicians. I'm just taking back what's mine.

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[camperdave]

Many LiveCD distros can be dumped to a USB flash drive. Alternatively, you could use rewriteable CDs.

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[tqk]

Many LiveCD distros can be dumped to a USB flash drive.

I'm not fond of those things. I've built a RAID array out of them for the heck of it, but I've seen copies to USB keys take all night, while a CD would take fifteen min. max. I don't trust that tech.

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[Just Some Guy]

Better idea - why not make it a levy on iPods and other music players. Why should I have to pay a royalty when I don't download music?

Better idea - they can kiss my ass. Why should I have to pay a royalty when I purchased all the music I possess?

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

They have one for music players too I'm pretty sure.

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[Kalidor]

Actually it's all media .. and there's two levies on it. And by media I mean tapes, cd's, harddrives, thumbdrives, and in a twist of stupidity ram chips, because they couldn't figure out the difference between flash memory and running memory.

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

actually the stipend is for blank CD's for computers, and the last I heard, the artists haven't seen one penny of that. All the money is stuck in some escrow account controlled by the record companies.

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[dryeo]

This is Canada, all CDR's have the levy applied to them. That is why DVD's are cheaper.

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[dryeo]

In Canada rewritable CD's also have the levy applied. You have to use DVD's.

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[ArundelCastle]

They negotiated a levy on all blank CDs long ago, for this same reason.

This is double-dipping.

Better idea - why not make it a levy on iPods and other music players. Why should I have to pay a royalty when I don't download music?

They also negotiated a levy on iPods and other music players long ago. Then got rid of it in 2004-5, and some are trying to bring it back now.*
The same counter argument applies. Just as blank CD-Rs can hold not-music, audio players can play not-music. My mother's iPod puts public library branches to shame with its collection of purchased audiobooks and spoken word podcasts.

I got in on the refunds after buying my iPod Mini. And even that tax didn't stop them from double dipping. Unless the government mandates the removal of a preexisting levy, no way in hell is the industry going to give one up. "That's okay, we're getting enough money over here now." Ain't gonna happen.

*Don't feel like inline linking, so here:
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/apple-canada-begins-claims-process-for-ipod-levy-refunds/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/canadas-75-ipod-levy-returns.ars

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[mark-t]

As the Canadian gov't has proved repeatedly, it has absolutely no interest in listening to what the people who actually have a clue really want... and enough people are apathetic about the whole issue of copyright that these so-called leaders kept getting voted back in.

Long story short... the message they are painting is quite clear. "if you don't like it, move".

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[JabberWokky]

Better idea - they can kiss my ass. Why should I have to pay a royalty when I purchased all the music I possess?

Because they have turned into terrorists -- they've threatened to wreck the Edmund Fitzgerald!

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said anything about blank *audio* CDs? It's all blanks.

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should I pay a levy on my music player when I don't illegally download music either? The argument cuts boths ways, you know.

On top of that, they already tried to introduce a levy on MP3 players. When iPods were still around C$500, the levy would have been an extra $100 to $200, since they based it on the existing blank CD rate. You want to talk about bullshit? There it is.

Local moron/songwriter Andrew Cash has written a number of articles for Now magazine in the last 2 years or so wanting to bring back the so-called iPod levy. Even at a reduced rate, it's fucking highway robbery. Why should anyone have to pay this, without a clear breakdown from SOCAN showing *exactly* where all the money collected goes?

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[camperdave]

Be that as it may, you can use the same rewriteable CD again, and again, and again. You only pay the levy once.

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[Graham J - XVI]

Couldn't agree more, though I would add that this keeps happening no matter who we vote for. Funny that.

Desperation

[Tragek]

Wow, is this how desperate the music business is? Hell, as an artist I'd be pissed; I'd much rather get money from fans willingly, than from everyone by force.

Seriously, how does this make sense?

Re:Desperation

[betterunixthanunix]

It makes sense if people are going to be allowed to download whatever they want without having to fear a lawsuit. Pay the artists (through the record companies, which is suboptimal but good enough), stop suing everyone, and start talking about bringing copyright law in line with new technology, rather than trying to fight against the growth and progress of computers and the Internet.

Re:Desperation

[Tragek]

Perhaps; But hasn't iTunes already done most of that? Or am I alone in finding that iTunes is far easier than piracy? Hell, I like iTunes better than piracy because I can hope that at least some of my money gets to an artist.

Re:Desperation

[hitmark]

I guess it depends on the obscurity of the content.

Re:Desperation

[swamp_ig]

Seriously, how does this make sense?

It makes perfect sense! There's also going to be a $10 fee for movies, a $10 fee for video games, a $30 fee for porno (which everyone knows is the most dowloaded on the internet), a $10 microsoft fee, a $10 apple fee so you don't need to pay the app store anymore, a $10 fee for newspapers, a $10 fee for TV shows, ect.

Re:Desperation

[Tragek]

So is this better or worse then, for obscure artists? Are they going to monitor people's downloading to ensure proper distribution? Or is SOCAN just going to flat rate distribute to all it's members? Neither seems tenable nor acceptable (of course, I've a beef against SOCAN ever since they started going after coffee shops).

Re:Desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

So is this better or worse then, for obscure artists?

I'm surprised you need to ask that. It's worse for them. It's actually removing their ability to defend their copyrights since they won't be able to sue anyone who is downloading their stuff without permission AND they won't see a red cent of the money collected either. As others said, it'll generally be calculated in the same way it's calculated for the blank media levy. If you aren't on the radio, you ain't getting a cut. 100% of the music played on the airways is from a tiny portion of major record labels. So no money, no way to defend your copyrights if you wish to do so, and your fans will have 120 dollars (plus tax, up to 13% or more depending on province) less money per year to spend on your legit CDs or music downloads. And really, why would they want to pay you for legit CDs when they're already paying for music downloads.

Re:Desperation

[EdgeCreeper]

Worse, much worse.

Re:Desperation

[dryeo]

But the courts have already ruled that due to the levy, sharing is legal. Besides the Canadian Supreme Court seems to think that the right protecting us from unreasonable searches is actually a right to privacy. This makes it close to impossible for the labels to sue anyone here in Canada as they can't find out who John Doe actually is.
Laws are working their way through Parliament to fix this unluckily.

Re:Desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

Canadians already CAN download all they want without fearing a lawsuit ....

Counter proposal

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a counter proposal. Here it is...
Throw Canadian songwriters into a deep pit filled with raw sewage, punji sticks, and starving dingoes.

Re:Counter proposal

[thrillseeker]

Throw Canadian songwriters into a deep pit filled with raw sewage, punji sticks, and starving dingoes.

Dear Mr. Coward,

Unlike many harebrained ideas we receive here at Fox, your proposal for a new reality show intrigues us. Please wait by the phone for a call ...

Re:Counter proposal

[rossdee]

Dingoes are Australian, not Canadian

Anyway I download music from Amazon, and pay for it there. I assume that some of that money goes to the artists and songwriters, none of whom are canadian AFAIK

Re:Counter proposal

[Anonymous Coward]

Dingoes are Australian, not Canadian

Well yes, but Australia and Canada are both parts of the Commonwealth of Nations. My thinking was that by feeding the songwriters to a non-indigenous but not totally unfamiliar animal it might increase the potential audience and provide a trading opportunity.

We've brainstormed a bit and have come up with a provisional title: Maybe the Dingoes Ate Your Songwriter. In addition we've further speculated that should Australian songwriters propose a similar fee that an Australian offering that has the same general theme but replaces the dingoes with grizzly bears might be successful.

Canadian songwriters??

[markass530]

Eh, that pretty much says it all. /thread

Re:Canadian songwriters??

[Kenoli]

*That pretty much says it all, eh. /thread

Re:Canadian songwriters??

[cupantae]

Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Alanis Morissette, Bryan Adams. /comment

Re:Canadian songwriters??

[Anonymous Coward]

also (unfortunately) Celine Dion and Justin Bieber.

Re:Canadian songwriters??

[BluBrick]

Songwriters?

Justin...Fuck'n...Bieber?

Say it ain't so, Joe! Say it ain't so!

Re:Canadian songwriters??

[jgrahn]

also (unfortunately) Celine Dion and Justin Bieber.

Skinny Puppy neutralizes Celine Dion pretty well.

Re:Canadian songwriters??

[dkleinsc]

Now, now, the Canadian Government has apologized for Bryan Adams on several occasions!

Re:Canadian songwriters??

[rbrander]

Nelly Furtado, Feist, Leonard Cohen. /FU2

Re:Canadian songwriters??

[markass530]

if all those people became famous while living, and still lived in Canada you would have a point

Re:Canadian songwriters??

[KingAlanI]

I'm personally not much of a fan of Rush or Arcade Fire, but I like some Enter The Haggis and Great Big Sea as a subset of my taste for Celtic/rock fusion music, so I'll add those to the list of good Canadian songwriters.

Re:Canadian songwriters??

[Anonymous Coward]

you forgot Celine Dion and Loverboy

Re:Canadian songwriters??

[dryeo]

Still have to change the radio station regularly though to get away from him.
God I hate Brian Adams and his sucking on dirty underwear.

Re:Canadian songwriters??

[Anonymous Coward]

Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Alanis Morissette, Bryan Adams. /comment

Sheila Brovlawski: "This is not the first troublesome thing to come from Canada. Let us not forget Bryan Adams."
Canadian Prime Minister: "The Canadian Government has already apologized for Bryan Adams on several occasions."

'nuff said.

Re:Canadian songwriters??

[Anonymous Coward]

Not To Mention... The Band, Rush, The Guess Who, The Tragically Hip, April Wine, Arcade Fire, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, The Barenaked Ladies, Big Sugar, Sum 41, the moffatts, NIckelback, The Philosopher Kings, Finger Eleven, The Real McKenzies, Tegan and Sara, The Tea Party, Theory of a Deadman, Three Days Grace, ...

Heard of ANY of these? Yeah... yeah you're an idiot.

If It is Such a Good Idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is such a good idea, why don't the sell the licenses themselves? That's because they want someone else to underwrite their experiment. So even those customers who elect not to purchase a license, they'll be paying through their internet fees for the expense to collect and send the money to the artists.

Nice!

They did it already.

[Anonymous Coward]

They did this with CDs already. That worked out sooo well.

Wake up

[Anonymous Coward]

When will musicians wake up. If I want your music, then I will buy it. In no way do you deserve to charge me, a law-abiding citizen to do something that I am not even going to do.

And I am sick of people even considering it. It's so stupid. It's just music.

could spark a wave on 'net entrepeurship

[Anonymous Coward]

A File Sharing Maximization (FSM) business would quietly help songwriter clients maximize their earnings from the songwriter's association by downloading his/her songs from arrays of desktops (many IP addresses) at varied but realistic times-of-day.

Deaf people think what of this idea?

[vik]

Seriously. There are a lot of deaf people and they won't take kindly to pre-paying for something they can't possibly use.

Vik :v)

Re:Deaf people think what of this idea?

[betterunixthanunix]

Funny, because blind people still pay taxes that are used to construct highways, at least as far as I know. People without children still pay taxes that are used to support public schools. So what exactly is wrong with deaf people paying a tax that supports the creation of music (in theory, anyway)?

My issue with this tax is that it is probably not going to result in an end to the recording industry lawsuits. That is the real problem here: they want taxpayer support, while retaining the ability to attack taxpayers who dare to download music.

Re:Deaf people think what of this idea?

[gman003]

But blind people still benefit from highways (even though they don't drive, they still ride), and people without children benefit from educational taxes (because, seriously, would you want to put up with someone else's uneducated brat?). The only people this tax would benefit is the RIAA (or whatever the Canadian equivalent is).

Re:Deaf people think what of this idea?

[ColdWetDog]

My issue with this tax is that it is probably not going to result in an end to the recording industry lawsuits. That is the real problem here: they want taxpayer support, while retaining the ability to attack taxpayers who dare to download music.

No, the bigger issue is that you take a group of people who now feel entitled to a perpetual payout because their business model changed. It may be 'reasonable' in this case (I think it's not) but it opens the door for everyone who feels that the Internet has hurt them financially to seek redress by tacking on fees. So we'll see:

$5.00 for still photographers
$25.00 for movie producers (hey movies cost a lot of money to produce)
$10.00 for the poor forlorn advertising agencies
$15.00 for the porn factories
$4.89 for the ISP to cover administration of the funds.

Now it starts to look like my wireless bill.

Re:Deaf people think what of this idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't society benefit from having a sustainable music industry?

Re:Deaf people think what of this idea?

[farnsworth]

Theoretically, doesn't the population at large benefit from creating an culture that is conducive to creating art? I rarely go to museums, but it is my understanding that the NEA puts a great deal of financial effort into many of the things that hang on those walls. What's the difference between childless adults fostering education compared to artistically-agnostic (either due to disability or disinterest) adults fostering the creation of art?

Re:Deaf people think what of this idea?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Given that humans have been making assorted flavors of social noise since well before the invention of currency(the instruments are often made out of biological materials, so archeological evidence is a bit patchy; but 35,000-40,000 years has been confirmed) it isn't at all clear that society requires a music industry...

Now, if you want high production values superstar stuff, you can really only do that on an industry basis. If, however, you don't mind the work of people who are doing it recreationally, or for social standing, or in live gigs(freestanding, or paid by social establishments to add atmosphere and drive patronage) the supply of music is very likely to continue without any industry. It just seems to be something that humans do.

Re:Deaf people think what of this idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd, I pay the educational taxes and still have to deal with everyone else's uneducated brats.

GET OFF MAH LAWN!

Re:Deaf people think what of this idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no recording industry lawsuits in Canada, because sharing music isn't illegal here. Why else would we still pay the levy on blank media to the recording industry?

Re:Deaf people think what of this idea?

[gman003]

That assumes that this law will actually benefit the people making the music. Normally, the only people to get money are the parasites - the "managers", the "producers", the "executives", and, of course, their lawyers, who make money off the music without even pretending to have musical ability.

Re:Deaf people think what of this idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a punishment tax and has nothing to do with ideas of roads and education - a better example would be:

Everyone serves a year in jail - thus all crime will go away and we never have to prosecute murder or fraud since everyone has served time!!

Re:Deaf people think what of this idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do put up with someone else's uneducated brat! They're called coworkers!

Re:Deaf people think what of this idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to answering this!!!!!!
Impressive how some people doesn't even think a little about what they are writing!

Re:Deaf people think what of this idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only people this tax would benefit is the RIAA (or whatever the Canadian equivalent is).

And it's not even Canadian music being downloaded in any great quantity.

Basically these a**holes want a slice of the pirating racket.

10 bucks a month?

[the_Bionic_lemming]

So they would want me to add over 25% of cost to my monthly bill in order to download songs - which I wouldn't and don't?

I have a better idea. for that ten bucks a month I can download any song, movie, or game I want. No media protection, no online DRM, and no exceptions. Iron Man 3 would be available for me to grab and watch for free the day it's released.

Otherwise - Get bent.

Making money the old fashioned way...

[russotto]

When a government does this sort of thing, it's called a tax. When an established church does it, it's a tithe. Sorry, SOCAN, but when anyone else does it, it's just plain old stealing, and I don't mean copyright infringement.

Allocation?

[Tablizer]

How does it tell good musicians from bad musicians? If I spray my crotch silver and put furniture in my hair while playing toilet rolls and call myself a "musician", what keeps me from getting the same amount as Lady Gaga?......oh, wait

Re:Allocation?

[Tragek]

A big problem.

Re:Allocation?

[Anonymous Coward]

what keeps me from getting the same amount as Lady Gaga?

Well, she's young and sexy and wears less than some pole dancers in a strip club and is willing to shake it around.
You're a disgusting fat-body.

Re:Allocation?

[Tablizer]

Yes, I agree, but how does their new system measure and allocate that worth?

Re:Allocation?

[Graham J - XVI]

I added this to my favourite quotes on FB. Gold!

SOCAN can go fuck itself.

[drunkennewfiemidget]

It's already responsible for all sorts of idiotic laws and levies in Canada that shouldn't exist. It's idiotic.

If you have a wedding at a public venue you rent, you will be charged the 'SOCAN' fee.

Even if you don't play any music.

Even if you have a band playing music that will only play their own songs and they aren't a member of SOCAN.

So I say again,

SOCAN can DIAF.

(I also remember reading a story some time ago about the idiotic SOCAN levy on blank media not actually being paid to any actual musicians.)

However, it's become more and more apparent with every passing day that the CRTC isn't interested in consumers'/citizens' rights, so I'm sure this will go through, and we'll continue to be fucked by Canadian coporations.

Re:SOCAN can go fuck itself.

[cyber-vandal]

I don't know if this is the same in Canada but in the UK shops that sell musical instruments have to pay a levy to the PRS because someone, while testing their potential purchase, might play a copyrighted song with it which to them is a public performance. What a bunch of utter wankers.

Re:SOCAN can go fuck itself.

[MysteriousPreacher]

I don't know if this is the same in Canada but in the UK shops that sell musical instruments have to pay a levy to the PRS because someone, while testing their potential purchase, might play a copyrighted song with it which to them is a public performance. What a bunch of utter wankers.

You sure about that? The PRS aspire to be a proper criminal organisation, but that seems a stretch - even for them.

No need

[SwedishPenguin]

Now that there are good online services available, I almost never download music over peer-to-peer.. Now if I can get spotify for movies and tv-shows, I will stop pirating.

Naw.

[Anonymous Coward]

Our courts have already thrown out all the copyright cases brought before them because they were idiocy. So I'm not worried about reprisal.

Existing levy on blank CDs

[click170]

Sure, we can talk about adding a 10$ fee to internet bills, but only *after* you rescind the levy on blank media.
Canadians already pay a levy on blank CDs for the expressed purpose of compensating artists.

Re:Existing levy on blank CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they really still sell blank CDs?

This is at least workable.

[Manuka]

May need to iron out the kinks a little and fine-tune the dollar amount, but conceptually, this is a workable idea (and surprisingly so, coming from the music business!). We've been screaming at the music industry to come up with ideas to allow them to adapt to and survive the new internet reality, and they're delivering on it.

It's not unlike the monthly license paid by commercial entities to Muzak and its ilk for playing background music in public locations or some of the licenses paid by churches for displaying lyrics.

The benefit to end users is the get-out-of-jail-free card for downloading all manner of content. Conceivably, on a package that includes the music/video license, QoS tagging could be implemented to improve the experience, providing the value add to the user. On the flip side, the benefit to an ISP is that they wouldn't have as much administrative headache of dealing with the copyright cops for that class of users. If ISPs have a way of identifying these sorts of users to content providers like Pandora, those content providers could provide a different tier of service, since they wouldn't have licensing to deal with either.

I think it's certainly an idea worth exploring and refining.

Re:This is at least workable.

[rudy_wayne]

May need to iron out the kinks a little and fine-tune the dollar amount, but conceptually, this is a workable idea (and surprisingly so, coming from the music business!). We've been screaming at the music industry to come up with ideas to allow them to adapt to and survive the new internet reality, and they're delivering on it.

If you really think this is a good idea then you have absolutely no understanding of how the music industry works.

Let's say that the $10 a month fee in enacted. In a couple of years, the record companies will be complaining that too many people are downloading music for free instead of buying it, so the fee needs to be raised to $20. A couple years later, still not enough. Sales are still way down. We need to raise the fee higher. And Higher.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

Re:This is at least workable.

[rotide]

Scary thought.. Assuming they can get the kinks out and make it equitable while also being fair..

The recording industry could then open up servers that only those connecting from "taxed" ISPs can go and download every song held by them and potentially the other industries? While you're at their site downloading, there could be advertisements for upcoming shows, merchandise, etc. They might actually make a profit off it.

The only problem I see now is, how will iTunes (not that I use it) survive this? Who would buy a song if they "already paid" via their internet bill and went to site x to get it for "free"?

Re:This is at least workable.

[c]

> If ISPs have a way of identifying these sorts of users to content providers like
> Pandora, those content providers could provide a different tier of service, since
> they wouldn't have licensing to deal with either.

Services like Pandora (who say they can't even afford to offer services to Canadians due to the cost) need to get paid, and why would anyone pay Pandora for something they're already paying to get from other sources? Why would anyone buy something from iTunes? Why... And do you think the music companies are going to give Pandora/Apple/Amazon/etc a break because Canadians already pay via other means? Like they currently give them a break because Canadians pay through the CD media levy?

It would seem to me that the scheme would act as a disincentive for anyone to build innovative services around music in Canada. Particularly if those services were built elsewhere (like the USA) and ported to Canada. We're already seeing things not work, and the approach to licensing isn't as dissimilar as it would be under a flat-rate ISP billing program.

The other part of the problem is trusting SOCAN to do a proper job of compensating artists. What kinds of metrics are they planning on using to divvy things up? How do they ensure fairness and accuracy?

Re:This is at least workable.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is in no way workable.

When someone steals my stuff I don't get a levy on some unrelated item. to pay me. No I'm out the theft unless I catch the thief. This is a clear case of greed.

SOCAN believes that artists are entitled

"I have something that you must have stolen, so you owe me. Ignore the fact that what I allege you stole isn't something you'd actually willingly pay for. And disregard the problem that I can't prove you stole it. If it wasn't you it was one of your neighbors and so you and all your friends owe me a livelihood so I'm going to charge you a fee for the opportunity that if I should have something that might be worth the price I charge for it you can skip paying me later by paying me now. "

There are Canadian musicians who i own several copies of there songs through several media. There are others who I can't click skip fast enough when it gets played because they bundled something I didn't want to hear with something I did.

I play by the rules and respect them enough to not steal there work. They can respect me enough to not ask me to pay to subsidize some perceived Canadian cultural value to music that not enough Canadians care about to make it economically viable.

Re:This is at least workable.

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as being a Canadian I can now goto iTunes and download any song or album I want anytime I want. Otherwise - NO, this is a preemptive punishment tax on all internet connections. Muzak is a dedicated service and the licenses paid by churches for displaying lyrics also comes with a service to get those lyrics!

Unless upon connecting ISP's either offer a place to download all music files this is charging for a service un-render-able.

It may sound nice to you - but your understanding of the situation seems to be mis-guided!

Sign me up

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do I apply for the Canadian Musician Membership Club.

Bridge toll.

[unity100]

Why not cut to the chase and just toll everyone passing any bridge, junction, road crossing, waterway and then divert the loot to the "intellectual property 'rights' holders" ?

because that is, entirely this.

Re:Bridge toll.

[md65536]

Why not cut to the chase and just toll everyone passing any bridge, junction, road crossing, waterway and then divert the loot to the "intellectual property 'rights' holders" ?

What a ridiculous and exaggerated idea.

Really, they should just add an "ear tax" on anyone who can hear. Because, they might use those ears to hear some precious, precious music that doesn't belong to them.

Re:Bridge toll.

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the Corporate States of America. Be joyous paying your tithes to your corporate overloards, for they will truly save you from evildoers.

It's not so abstract...

[Thraxy]

I live in Denmark, and I pay a TV license because I own a computer. Around $400 a year.

Apparently, since the TV network is a "public service", they can charge me, because MAYBE I might go on their website and look at their stream, which isn't even HD. Greed in high places always manages to fuck everyone over in the end... I guess that's the lesson learned.

If I had those $400 extra a year, maybe I could afford a TV set.

Re:It's not so abstract...

[91degrees]

Being charged a fee makes no difference as to whether you go tot he website or not. Your computer is taxed. The tax is earmarked for the TV broadcaster.

It's not like it costs them a different amount if you do or don't watch their output. You don't get charged for that because there's no reason to charge for it. It's just a tax based crudely on the group of people most likely to benefit from the service it pays for.

Re:It's not so abstract...

[Thraxy]

The CEO also left a while ago after some scandal and got a golden handshake... more than 1½ million dollars worth. That leaves a lot of people like me angry at that this is the shit we pay a "media license" for.

Here's an idea....

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they offer a service where people can voluntarily pay them $10/month to stream any song they own the rights to and see who signs up.

Re:Here's an idea....

[cyber-vandal]

You mean like this?

I want some swag, too

[Anonymous Coward]

So, to get a cut of that swag, I just have to join SOCAN! Su-weet!

Just Tax Every Thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't we just put an additional 100% tax on everything, and then give everyone a job (or even better, a free check every month) subsidized by those taxes? It's so simple, I don't know why we don't just do that.

Re:WHAT SONGWRITERS ??

[grahammm]

Canada? Has songwriters? Name one!

I will name two. Sarah McLachlan, Loreena McKennitt

I can't stop laughing

[fish waffle]

It's not unlike the monthly license paid by commercial entities to Muzak

Yes, and it represents a similar level of quality. Really, you think a sanctioned 33% tax (and absolutely certain to grow!) on your internet access is worth supporting and even further entrenching all that auto-tune crap coming from the major labels and clear-channel radio stations?

Details please!

[uffe_nordholm]

There has been some discussion about having a similar system in Sweden. However, the finer details made it clear that while it would be legal to download via BT, it would still be illegal to upload, so you could still be dragged to court for doing something you are paying to be allowed to do. I didn't see any mention of whether or not the Canadian version would allow people to upload as well. Does anybody know?

And let's face it: if you are only allowed to download there is no point is paying the fee since you can be busted for having uploaded the files via BitTorrent.

Re:Details please!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're describing the current situation in the Netherlands. Uploading music is illegal while downloading is not, because of a loophole in the law. The local copyright enforcer (BREIN) only targets providers of content, not users. In fact, at least one major ISP has made adverts explicitly stating you can download movies and music super fast with their internet subscriptions. At the moment the goverment is leaning towards not fixing the loophole because of "non-availability of a comparable service by legitimate content providers". Currently there is no easy legal way to obtain movies by direct download in the Netherlands (netflix is not available). This will most likely change in the future and I suspect the loophole will eventually be closed.

Song writers?

[Charliemopps]

"Songwriters Association of Canada" a business that claims to represent song writers, proposed this idea.

The president of this company is famous for writing a song by the name of ""Does a Fool Ever Learn"
Ironic eh?

Re:Song writers?

[DNS-and-BIND]

The president of this company is famous for writing a song by the name of ""Does a Fool Ever Learn" Ironic eh?

No, it's not ironic. It's just a coincidence. For some reason Canadians have a real problem understanding the concept of irony. What the hell is wrong with you people? Irony is not 10,000 toques when all you need is a can of endangered seal meat.

Re:Song writers?

[Graham J - XVI]

It is ironic because he is a fool and he never learns.

Brrrrrr

[cyber-vandal]

"Damn it's cold today" - Satan

Re:Brrrrrr

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, that comment should go in the global warming thread.

Music sales...

[BronsCon]

What, exactly, do they think instituting a $10 "download all you want and now we can't sue you for it" tax will do for sales?

How about just saying "we're not assholes, so we're not going to sue you for downloading (or uploading in a torrent), but we'd better not catch you selling pirated copies"? I think that would do wonders for sales; especially given that I don't buy an album until I've listened to the whole thing and people I know who listen to the same music I do are all the same way, so borrowing it from someone else is straight out.

Re:Music sales...

[houghi]

You added the uploading part. I am sure they won't and still sue every up loader, meaning everybody.

That would be a new tax. Just look at the damages each uploader does according to several court cases and your monthly bill will rise another 250.000$ a month.

True?

[no-body]

From: http://www.windsorstar.com/entertainment/Canadian+songwriters+propose+music+sharing/4387146/story.html

"We aren't entirely sure that anybody other than those people who are directly involved really understand all of the nuances. Without monetizing what happens on the Internet, which is mostly file-sharing, it is going to be very hard for anybody (in music) to make a living."

(emphasis mine)

In essence, if it can be spun and makes money, it's ok. I wonder how many are already salivating on a cut from this cake.

Re:True?

[Tragek]

... no, what happens on the internet is mostly porn.

Oh wait. They're file sharing porn.

\me shuts up.

Let me get this

[future assassin]

Wait let me get this straight, they refuse to provide an easy access to full online music catalogs so people can buy any song they want online yet they want to impose a $10 fee for Internet usage. Yah no thanks I can download all I can already since the 500+ cdr I have in my house paid for that right.

That would give me a 339% price increase

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Canada. I pay $2.95 a month for dial-up from 295.ca. Adding $10 on to that works out to a price increase of 339%.

Everything fits into the box you designed, yes?

[tqk]

I'm Canadian, I don't download music, how do I opt out?

Re:Everything fits into the box you designed, yes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Sir or Madam,
      You may simply opt out by terminating your internet services.

Regards,
      SOCAN

Re:Everything fits into the box you designed, yes?

[tqk]

Dear Sir or Madam,
            You may simply opt out by terminating your internet services.

Dear SOCAN, please what is your mailing address at your physical location?

Grr ...

[For the fibbies listening in, this is rhetorical. I'm not a unabomber, honest; not my thing.]

Make it Opt In

[Rinnon]

Shooting this down without having a discussion about it is terribly short sighted. We keep complaining that the RIAA and co need to think of better business models. Maybe this is it. I am not opposed to paying 10 dollars a month to download as much music as I want. I am however opposed to it being tacked onto my Internet bill against my will. So why not make this an Opt In option? People who don't download music don't need to Opt In. I could Opt In and download whatever I want without fear of legal reprisal. I don't think that's such a terrible deal. Next it'll be Hollywood wanting it's 10 bucks a month, or Book Publishers. Again, I'd be happy to pay 10 bucks a month to be able to legally download all the movies or books I want to. As long as it's my choice, I think that's a really reasonable price to pay. Having the Internet cost 100 bucks a month because of Entertainment Taxes when all you want is Wikipedia is ridiculous. Being given the OPTION to pay 100 bucks a month with all that Entertainment legally included is actually fairly reasonable.

Re:Make it Opt In

[Tragek]

This could be workable; But only if I get to dictate to SOCAN to whom my dollar goes. I don't want to fund Justin Bieber's haircuts, I want to fund the bands I want to hear more of.

Like that's going to happen.

Re:Make it Opt In

[Anonymous Coward]

Whom would you be downloading all this from? It's not like the music labels / etc. would just publish their work online for free...

Re:Make it Opt In

[sco08y]

Shooting this down without having a discussion about it is terribly short sighted. We keep complaining that the RIAA and co need to think of better business models. Maybe this is it.

It's a model, alright, and it's certainly a common one, but it sure as hell isn't a business model.

Patronage of the arts is a civic duty, and it only works when patrons undertake it voluntarily.

Re:Make it Opt In

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the conditions would be of course to have the music/movies/etc available online in a high quality format, preferably an open standard. All of them. No exceptions. I do not see that happening anytime soon...

Re:Make it Opt In

[blarkon]

You've misunderstood - when someone says "they need to find a better business model" they are usually saying "I don't have to pay for this and I don't want to pay for this but I'm happy to keep consuming it".
There was a cartoon published on Salon.com a few years ago that said "Internet Thinking Applied To The Real World" - where a guy identified as a computer professional had a plumber come around and fix his sink. When the plumber asked to be paid he was told that the computer professional wasn't going to pay in cash because the plumber should really be considering a different business model, but that the programmer was happy to provide recommendations to his friends about the quality of the plumber's service and that if he wanted to make an income from plumbing, he really should be selling t-shirts as people liked paying for t-shirts, but not for plumbers.

Re:Make it Opt In

[Anonymous Coward]

"Shooting this down without having a discussion about it is terribly short sighted. We keep complaining that the RIAA and co need to think of better business models. Maybe this is it."

It's also terribly short sighted to let yourself get rammed up the ass for the same thing two times in a row.

The CD levy is the exact same thing as this proposal and for the SAME reasons. (To compensate for "losses" due to piracy.)

It starts at X dollars a month, and every year it will be increased for all sorts of reasons. Inflation. Higher than "normal" piracy levels. Because they want more. Etc.

The CD levy started with pennies per cd. It's done nothing but grow since then. This is the exact same thing that will happen. And all the money will still go to the wrong people. The vast majority of artists won't see a damned penny.

I started a boycott of RIAA affliated music years ago. There has been 2 exceptions to that list since 2007. I do not pirate their shit either. I'm rather enjoying the indy music I discover. I do this to avoid putting money into the RIAA's (And their Canadian Counterparts) hands. This kind of levy would force me to hand over 120 dollars to them every year, plus fucking tax. All for something I DON'T want to have anything to do with.

But most importantly, remember that this won't protect you from lawsuits even if you pay in. They'll take your money and then do everything they possibly can to find ways to show you're also uploading. And they will keep you in court until you prove you didn't. The extortion tactics will continue and grow.

Compromise is something that requires both parties to be looking for a common ground. This is never going to be the case with record labels as they will take whatever they can get, and then lobby for more. And more. And more. And more. (Just read the articles over the last decade. It's all right there, and still ongoing.)

Re:Make it Opt In

[xigxag]

I've often thought that this is something YouTube should implement, on an opt-in basis. For example:

$10/mo. gets you "Silver Tube" status. You know those uploads that get taken down, or the sound gets stripped? Player status would unblock a blocked video and restore your ability to here the sound of those with stripped audio tracks.

$15/mo. gets you "Gold Tube" status. Same as above but with the option of turning off those ad overlays. And maybe a download/watch offline button on the mobile version of YT.

$20/mo. gets you "Producer" status. Same as above but with the ability to UPLOAD videos/mixes without fear of copyright infringment. Maybe some revenue sharing.

The details of the categories/prices is not important. The point is that if YouTube sold some kind of opt-in copyright protection, it could make a mint for itself and for the copyright holders, make the users happy, implement the whole thing without government interference, and (even better for songwriters) use their stats to make sure that the proceeds are distributed fairly.

Also, If it's safe and inexpensive enough to upload a mashup legally, people would much rather pay than risk a lawsuit. And if they're too cheap to pay, they would get little sympathy from others.

Re:Make it Opt In

[Anonymous Coward]

Whom do you pay?
What product offerings will they provide you?
What is the per unit cost of the product you are paying for and to whom?

We have donation buttons for the experimental pay what you feel like paying business model; we don't need a government sponsored one as well.

Re:Make it Opt In

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if you don't shoot it down, and are willing to discuss it, you are admitting there's a grain of truth in it.
Slippery slope...

Re:Make it Opt In

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't download any canadian music (and I'm Canadian), and won't accept ANY additinonal monthly fee. We already help them survive using somes governments programs and all, we already help them in many ways... and now they want me to pay for somes music I won't even listen? If at least they could make somes good music, perhaps I'll buy somes, but in the meanwhile, don't touch my Internet bill!

Thoses damn artists should know when to shut up! If you can't survive only by selling your music, it's a good sign that your producing bad music, and should get lost.

Re:Make it Opt In

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of companies trying to arrange this as an opt-in model. The music companies always refuse to play ball.

My guess is that if this goes through, they'll still be trying to license every store and streaming company as well as trying to sell the music directly.
You might be able to download - but you can bet your a** that a company which enables your downloads (Napster or equivalent) will get shut down and sued to eternity.

They'll agree to this because everybody (including non-customers) pays. Then they'll carry on with every move they have to make sure they get more from all the real customers.

Re:Make it Opt In

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. What is wrong with the netflix model? Why do we have to go through our ISPs?

Guess what? I DON'T WANT MY INTERNET BILL TO START LOOKING LIKE MY SATELLITE BILL. Thanks.

Re:Make it Opt In

[Anonymous Coward]

And what of the people that currently download illegally? Do you really expect them to "opt in"? Nah, we (people who buy & download music legally) would end up footing the bill for them, while at least now its record companies that lose out. And they have a lot more money to spare....

Opt out for "me"

[dmomo]

If I am a musician selling music and am not a part of that cartel? And I don't want my music downloaded freely? Let me hear an argument how this would HELP musicians.

Why go to the ISP directly?

[Anonymous Coward]

If this system is opt-in, just provide a peer-to-peer program that only works if you pay the fee and lets you trade music with the community with impunity. A simple bit torrent tracker system can be used to gauge the popularity of songs to properly distribute the revenue.

Re:Why go to the ISP directly?

[Tragek]

Now this, is interesting. Boy do I wish I had mod points.

They've got the wrong idea

[ascii_(!!!!)_comb]

So this organization's idea is: they perceive that they are being robbed, hence to rectify the situation, they are going to rob the masses by force. Second, they're not going to provide any downloading services at all despite taking money from people. These people suck at business and morals.

Ah

[Stumbles]

Racketeering at its best. The MAFIA only wish they could be so blatant.

must be joking...

[alienzed]

This is what happens when people who don't understand the internet pass legislation regarding the internet. A fixed fee of 10$/month on top of one the most expensive internet services in the world? W.T.F. Seriously this is a horrible, unfair, greedy idea. SOCAN doesn't represent even a tiny fraction of musicians, get off your high horse. No one cares about labels anymore because labels are inefficient black holes of money that do everything in their power to take money away from the people who actually earn it. Besides, music should be free, it's not like there's actually such thing as true creativity, all artists borrow and sometimes outright steal the ideas, melodies, lyrics, etc, of other artists. I'm a pretty popular musician locally, and trust me, I don't deserve your money. That's what my REAL job is for.

Re:

[i41]

Damn right. You buy insurance against composers breaking your knees and still have to deal with performers, distributors, owners of mechanical rights, and all the other thugs. It's nothing but a blank media levy on the Internet. Free money for them, nothing for us.

I am now a songwriter

[md65536]

I've just written a song so that I can get on a share of that cash. Will I get an equal division of the cash? No? Why not??? Then why the fuck should they charge people an equal share of their imaginary cost?

Re:I am now a songwriter

[Anonymous Coward]

I am also a songwriter. Woohoo! We're in the money, we're in the money...
Everyone in Canada is going to retire a musician billionaire. This racket is GREAT!

What about the blank media levy?

[WhitetailKitten]

Before this gets imposed, how about the blank media levy get straightened out? I've yet to see any evidence that it's been used to properly compensate musicians (and songwriters and etc.) yet, and it's been in place for over a decade. Once THAT gets worked out, start applying it to potentially-infringing bandwidth.

For anyone confused by my use of "potentially-infringing," in Canada recordable media is charged a levy on the assumption that you might use that spindle of CD-Rs to make unauthorized copies of someone's album, regardless of what you're actually going to be doing. Now they're trying to do the same thing with Internet connections before they've even gotten the first effort to do what it says on the tin. (Don't get me wrong: They've collected millions. But there's no evidence it's gone to the artists it's being collected for.)

Yet again..

[codegen]

They propose this every year, and every year they get shot down.

Or the recording industry can stop dicking around

[naasking]

Or the recording industry can stop dicking around and provide a reasonable legal alternative to downloading. Sure, they might have to accept slimmer margins, and cut some fat, but better than no margins at all. Unfortunately, realistic business models are not part of the executive mindset in the industry.

BUT BUT !!

[unity100]

what about those who cannot hear, but feel rhythm through vibrations ?

Re:BUT BUT !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! We'll sue the snakes too!

We don't fear reprisal now...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Canadian Supreme Court ruled that individual users cannot be held accountable when downloading music only when uploading copyrighted music. The judges ruled correctly that there are many countries around the world without copyright laws that can allow for lawful download. They assumed that the average user would not be able to reasonably determine the country of origin of these downloads .

So it's a tax for no reason... storage mediums already have a tax so why would we want a second one?

Re:We don't fear reprisal now...

[BlueWaterBaboonFarm]

Exactly!
Already in Canada you CANNOT BE SUED FOR DOWNLOADING MUSIC for personal use*. Let me be clear, I do not mean I song that you own, I just mean any old song. This is due to our copyright laws which are admittedly a bit strange compared to other countries. This has been tested in the Supreme Court of Canada.

This essential is forcing you to buy a right** that you already have (and already pay for again with the blank media tax).

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMG_v._John_Doe
**I'm abusing this word I know

Absurd, but workable... maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Make it opt-in, make it cover personal non-commercial copying of all copyright materials (including movies, software, etc.), make it cover incidental uploading (all bittorrent except the first seeder), and make sure the government, not any one special interest group sets the rate and handles payouts, and this could work.

Call it a copyright infringement insurance plan, like car insurance, but with capped liability. If you're a rightsholder, you should have to register the copyright, show the government that your work is being shared on peer-to-peer networks in Canada, and then you'd get a lump sum payout based on previous/future sales of that work in the Canadian market.

Rightsholders can still go after commercial pirates and they can spend time in court suing themselves about how to divide up the money. If you honestly just use the internet for browsing and e-mail, then don't opt-in, and rightsholders can come after you, but first they would have to show a judge that there was infringement for commercial gain, or that the first copy of something came from your IP.

Really This will never happen. Some reasons being:

[levi989]

My reasons for it not working or even being fair. 1) Not everyone listens to music. 2) Out of those that do, not all download it illegally. 3) $10 is a ridiculous amount ON TOP of the internet bill... 4) Could certainly get it cheaper elsewhere. 5) Greedy pigs would probably keep if for them-selfs and not give it to the artists(look at the history of this music business, people). I think that clearly demonstrated why this is a ridiculously thing to try and do. Thanks for reading my comment!

Optional?

[Anonymous Coward]

If this were *optional*, I'd consider it, assuming it goes through a neutral (non-ISP, non-Songwriters) third party in case anyone argues about whether or not a household has paid for the month. I don't download anything; i stream off Last.fm, where I'd imagine a fraction of my subscription fee goes to the same thing.
 
Also, would they get rid of the tax on CDs and personal media players? I find that fairly unlikely...

Re:WHAT SONGWRITERS ??

[Anonymous Coward]

3. Aldo "Buy your kicks from the man in the white" Nova.

And last, but not least,

4. William Shatner.

Yes, yes, you say he didn't write anything, but you just don't know Bill like I do. His bathroom wall is full of (shite) lyrics.

Mandatory Spotify?

[Anonymous Coward]

So this proposal is a bit like mandatory spotify for all internet users, with the extra added benefit that you can p2p as much as you like. And the canadian songwriter association gets/distributes all the money. Yeah, that'll work ...

Re:Really This will never happen. Some reasons bei

[arekq]

I wish I could mod you up.

Workable, with some changes

[currently_awake]

How to make this work: 1- copyright only applies to commercial activities. Non commercial upload/download fully legal for all copyrighted materials (to be membership fees and fair adds on your website would make it commercial). 2- instead of paying based on radio air time (playlists owned by the big boys, indie music scene need not apply) you could mandate that all download sites keep track of downloads and submit numbers to the gov for money distribution.

why don't they

[Anonymous Coward]

why don't they create a site... where people who want to download free music can join for $10 a month and download free music. The artists/companies can also freely join if they want a share of the profit. If they don't, their music won't be available on the site.

the solution to everything in canada is taxation

[bunhed]

tax everyone for everything and then say it's it's 'free'

Basically just another hand-out

[Chas]

One of these "because we deserve it" things.

They came up with a song and the song was popular. Great!

They deserve to be paid for their product, sure enough. But this isn't payment for services rendered or for purchase of a product. This is a subsidy. Plain and simple. Take without consent, even from people who have never heard their damn songs.

Also, those of you figuring out it's 6-7K per member? WRONG!

Collection fees
Administration fees.
Bookkeeping fees.
Staffing fees.
Blah blahblah blah.

The actual artists themselves will be lucky to see more than a small fraction of that.

Wouldn't that be racketeering?

[Jane Q. Public]

Let's see... some association sets itself up to "represent" a group of people, even though not all of those people are members or asked it to do so. Under threat of lawsuit, it coerces people to pay a "protection fee" of $10 per month. It then distributes that money -- minus suitable "expenses", of course -- only to people who are members of the organization.

Yep. Racketeering. Illegal as hell.

Re:Wouldn't that be racketeering?

[Jane Q. Public]

If I remember correctly, there are still some racketeering suits pending against the RIAA and MPAA here in the States.

SOCAN of Questionable Origin

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Canada. I don't know who SOCAN represents but it's certainly self appointed.

Every business should adopt this strategy.

[pat sajak]

We can't make people people want to buy our product, so lets force them to buy it, whether they want it or not.

just so 50 cents will seem reasonable

[EmperorOfCanada]

They are just pulling this crap so that 50cents per month won't seem unreasonable. Quite simply I can't remember the last Canadian artist that I listened to. Maybe American Pie 5 years ago?

Most Canadian content is crap. I DON'T want to pay 1 cent a year for that crap. Then ask artists about the money that comes from CD and tape taxes and they will tell you that it nearly all goes to a few connected artists like Celine Dion and other Quebec artists.

This is quiet simply a money grab by a bunch of paper pushers.

What the Canadian government should be doing is supporting Canadian businesses that will grow Canada's economy via the internet by beating the crap out of the ISPs that are already charging too much. This instead of supporting a dying industry.

I know you might think this odd

[Shivetya]

but an old friend of mine is deaf and he listens to music, well he feels music. As such most of what he plays in his car is bass heavy but he does get enjoyment out of it. Now sometimes this leads to some hilarious choices in what he plays.

All ISP bills?

[nurb432]

What if I'm deaf and don't listen to music? What if i don't buy music from the music industry, and only directly from artists i support, as a general moral protest? Even more, why should my $ go to support groups that offend me, or music i don't even like? it doesn't now, so why am i being penalized?

That is not adapting to a new market like they should be doing, it sounds like buying your way into blackmailing.

But... I don't listen to artists who would benefit

[urbanriot]

So, a select few Canadian song writers would benefit from this, despite the fact that I don't listen to them? What about the Canadian song writers that I do listen to, that aren't a member of the SOCAN outfit? How do they obtain my money? (Outside of me buying their albums and paying to hear them live, which I already do)

I call bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

"A group representing Canadian songwriters.." ...and whom might they be? Are the actual songwriters too ashamed to put their names on this proposal?

Name and shame or GTFO! This is likely the very people WHO SHOULD NOT GET 1 PENNY MORE!! ...off the backs of those with real talent. Being a lawyer IS NOT A TALENT!!!!!!!!!!

Of course, the answer is still going to be "no." since as mentioned already, blank media is already levied.

A More Equitable Proposal

[Digital Vomit]

I have a more equitable proposal. How about Canadian songwriters fuck the hell off?

The hook wasn't catchy enough.

[earls]

And you needed a hotter beat.

They can pay me.

[earls]

I will protect their music. Either they can pay up every week for my protection or something bad might happen - god forbid, I'm just saying, ya know.

Who collects

[PPH]

If this is to be distributed to Canadian artists, can we require that they move back to Canada to be eligible? You can have Celine Dion and Justin Bieber back. Please.

uhh..

[Ogive17]

Celine Dion should be paying ME $10/month just for the slight chance I am subjected to listen to one of her songs.

Deja vu

[lyinhart]

Sounds familiar...

I Propose...

[kawabago]

I propose that the music industry pay each and every Canadian citizen $10/month for pain and suffering over the terrible music they produce!

How about...

[drolli]

the music industry stops whining. Since a DRM-Free Music store (Ubuntu One) which is convenient to use exists well integrated on my favourite OS, i already buy songs for rougly $10 per month, that is, from the musicians i want to hear. From the unresanble labels i will still buy a CD. Why should I pay for the 10+ collections of some people who just download for downloadings sake.

Its like with the movies: please focus on your customers (like me, who spends easily $300 per year in the cinema and $200 per year for renting DVDs). Please continue to use that revenue to make more good movies.

We don't need a fee for a new type of public brodcasts.

there goes capitalism's last shred of dignity

[epine]

Heads I win, tails you lose. It's new the world order. Everything old is new again.

It took me nearly 25 years to figure out my political and economic slant. Never identified myself as liberal or conservative. Trade unions are the worst form of racketeering, except for all the others; and conservatives define intelligence as knowing when to limit its use (e.g. whenever anything matters). Conservatives most admire a trait once they erect bars around it (or should I say stone tablets?), and because it's readily on view, prowling in sleek captivity, they also think they have more of it. But enough bear baiting.

I've discovered I'm a die-hard transactionist. I believe the beneficence of the invisible hand prevails only when transactions take place between equally informed parties who care enough about the outcome to make a considered decision. Against the orchestrated forces of rational ignorance, the invisible hand wears no clothes. Who would have guessed faith in the invisible has a dark underbelly? Open source equals (or at least enables) informed participants. That's why I'm here.

I've made an informed, considered decision to limit my music purchases from the music-industrial complex. Their response: impose a tax payable by people who won't benefit on the grounds that downloaders are guilty before proven innocent, so there's no moral compunction against harvesting dolphin. If you swim in the ocean, you're whale meat by definition.

Given my economic views, and my belief about the importance of those views for the proper function of democratic government, this proposal falls barely short of treasonable, if anyone's keeping score from the nose-bleed bleachers.

I favour things such as the Vickrey auction. Truthful bidding lubricates the invisible hand. Most humans just don't want to think that hard, most of the time. We tend to reserve our best effort for our dominant economic concern (usually our employment) and tap into the gratification bypass as much as possible in every other circumstances. The day divides into 9-5 and 4:20. Rationality is hard work. The invisible hand runs a taxation department, and most people welsh. (Welsh, origin unknown, but one can guess.)

In a perfect world, we'd solve these proposals by laughing any government that lends an ear straight out of office.

Unfortunately, most people living within capitalist democracy have only the shallowest belief in either. Too many people seem to define capitalism as the right to pursue a fat profit by any means (including bail-out or central planning) and democracy as a two-party pendulum, with both sides beholden to power minorities.

As George Orwell observed, if you can get language straight, many of these problems go away. Somehow we need to paint these music industry connivers as the politburo leaches they aspire to become. The term just needs to be a little more catchy to enter the popular consciousness. Klepto-kittens? "Kitten" has a lifetime pass on the gratification bypass. Or maybe klepto-critters, since they're renouncing much of their claim to human dignity.

And for their worldview, perhaps grubism (rhymes with pube). Grubist minions, for those who fail to rise in opposition?

Grubism: the economic philosophy of collective responsibility for individual theft to the benefit of minority power elites. Antonym, liberal democracy.

Also (one wishes) the Incumbent Reelection Prevention Act. Unfortunately, as a Canadian, I have to say we're just not that smart.

Culture Tax

[Sapphon]

Proposals similar to this have been discussed in other countries in the past; I remember watching a panel discussion during a German arts festival (I've forgotten which one) in 2009 on pretty much the same topic – they called it a "culture tax".

Really, one should conceptually separate two things:
1) The desire to support musicians with public money; and
2) The source of that money.

The principle of supporting the arts industry with public money is well established, and, while it's difficult to say what the "right" level of funding is, I doubt Slashdot is the forum best suited to discussing this :-P
However, I think we can broadly agree that, due to internet-based file sharing, musicians are earning some lower amount of money than they would be in the absence of file sharing. (On average, over all musicians. File-sharing/piracy is not the only reason, but it is a reason. This should be reasonably uncontroversial.) Without implying that these are my personal views, I'm going to play the advocate and argue that, due to the benefit musicians/the arts sector provide to society in general, they should be supported to offset a decline in privately-collected revue that is of no fault of their own.

If you accept that argument (or a similar one), the second issue is then from where that money should come. I'm not an expert on the Canadian tax system, but I'm going to bet that, like most Western countries, the majority of Government revenue comes from income taxes, corporate tax, and perhaps some form of consumption tax (sales tax/VAT/GST/whatever); and, further, than the minority of its revenue is tied to a specific use when it is raised. (Technical terms differ: some countries refer to a tax where the revenue's use is pre-specified as an "excise"; I think Americans call it "earmarking"?) Most funding of Government expenditure comes from this pool of general-use funds, however, many countries have these use-specific taxes – petrol or car taxes (excises) to fund road maintenance or transport programs; specific taxes for healthcare, reconstruction funds, etc.

So – should this funding of musicians from from general revenue, or from a new (higher) tax on a specific area? (Maybe both?) It's sensible to tax the activity that is decreasing the musicians' income, but, if we could tax piracy, we'd certainly be doing so by now. What's the next-best alternative (i.e. how close can we get to taxing internet piracy)? Putting a tax on BitTorrent traffic? Not going to work. Taxing "the internet" (or its use) is probably the closest we could reasonably come to being sure of taxing this activity.
Clearly, we would also be taxing people who don't "harm" musicians through piracy. However, plenty of taxes provide benefits to other members of society than those who pay them; that's a basic part of the tax system. Use-specific taxes/excises are a little different, but, for example, Australian car owners are required to pay a tax for owning a car that goes into a fund to pay the victims of car accidents, even if they themselves never cause an accident are are therefore not able to benefit from it – it's called "third-party insurance".

Very few Australians would think of third-party insurance as a use-specific tax, but it's basically the same. Similarly, if we recast this internet tax proposal as a (compulsory) fee that then gives you the right – and this is important: the imposition of a tax would have to come with a legitimisation of the taxable activity* – to then, in this case, download music for free.

That opens up a whole new can of worms, of course: Whose music? How much of it? What would the level of the fee be? What would this state-sponsored download infrastructure look like? Would it eventually include all culture (i.e. films, literature, etc) It's at this point that the discussion gets put in the "too-hard" basket, but the concept itself is one I find fascinating; I'm not yet sure where I stand on the idea.

In

Re:Culture Tax

[Graham J - XVI]

So it's ok to run over people in Australia? I'm so going there.

unworkable

[bokmann]

Dear Canadian Songwriters,

    The internet isn't about you.

Re:unworkable

[Graham J - XVI]

Our songwriters aren't the ones who are proposing this.

Unintended consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

Once there's a mandatory fee releasing you from moral and legal obligation it's going to be like the good old Napster days of everybody downloading the shit out of everything.

Almost makes sense.

[dragonhunter21]

That...

Actually makes a lot of sense.

Still, this will never happen. This penalizes those that don't care about music, and those that pay for it. I suppose those that pay for it might go over to the "Hey, I can get it for free (sorta). Why bother with iTunes anymore?" camp, but then Apple and all the other digital music distributors will throw a fit (and rightfully so).

What about the media fees?

[Anonymous Coward]

Already Canadians are hit with a media fee (roughly 20% of the cost of CDs or DVDs). Would the blank media fee go away? What about international organizations? Does the 'no barking' apply to Canadian content only, or does it apply to all content worldwide? Why $10? Why not $5? Exactly where will the money go? Who gets it? What if I don't download anything from P2P? What happens if I don't download any 'Recording industry' content? If musicians use a computer, can I charge a 'keyboard tax'? If musicians use software they didn't pay for, can I charge a software tax? Can I put a programmers tax on every musical event so that anyone using digital means to distribute music has to pay programmers who provided that means? Can I get a programmers tax levy on everything thats run by computer in our society? (Eg: clock, radio, vcr, computer, calculator, microwave oven, car, bus, truck, tv, dvd player, cell phone, pacemaker, heating/cooling systems, traffic lights, industrial control equipment). Fair is fair after all.

Canadian tax of $10.00/mo

[lsatenstein]

We must say no, as there is already a tax on blank cd's and blank DVDs. True enough, the latter medium is being replaced by chargeable downloads, but my answer to those wanting a tax is ..``get a job, and do music as a hobby, as it should be``

Uploads

[Anonymous Coward]

But we can already download legally. What about uploads?

Don't ya think $10 a month for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't ya think $10 a month for Bryan Adams and Celine Dion is a bit much?

Even rip snortin' drunk on iTunes at 2 AM I'd be unlikely to spend more than a buck ninety-eight for the both of them!

Concerts too

[KingAlanI]

I've seen sign-language interpreters at concerts before; live sound systems can be especially easy to feel, and this adds the aspect of watching the stage show (whether the act has a lot of bells and whistles or not). Not sure if some go without interpreters; I of course probably wouldn't be able to pick them out of the crowd.

P.S.
Yeah, it's ironic when you need to ask deaf people to turn their music down. :P

extorsion

[Anonymous Coward]

Pay us 10$ a month to look the other way

American, not USian

[metrix007]

Deal with it, instead of using nonstandard retarded imaginary terms.

Doesn't Make Sense ... Downloads are Legal in CAN

[fygment]

So far, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_sharing_in_Canada, Canadians are allowed to download for personal use. Uploading seems to still be problematic. And as mentioned, the bastards are already collecting a tariff on the media (CD's, etc.).

Just songwriters?

[homesnatch]

Obviously we need to add $10/mo to satisfy the songwriters...

We'll also need:
$10/mo for the music artists
$10/mo for the record label
$10/mo for movie script writers
$10/mo for actors
$10/mo for movie publishers
$10/mo for software developers
$10/mo for software companies

Did I miss anything?

Re:Just songwriters?

[BinBoy]

Add another $20 for photographers and artists.

to hell with that!

[Anonymous Coward]

As a person who actually records and distributes my own music, I am in no way pleased with the idea that I would have to get used to any profits routing through a third party. There certainly wouldn't be an effective way for me to opt out of this. Basically, I'd be surrendering my copyright to the world at large. Truthfully, I've never been particularly bothered by the idea of my work popping up on bittorrent, but I'll be pissed to no end when it's legalized in such a way that I am no longer in control of my sales because the decrepit and desperate music biz has destroyed all consumer incentive to purchase my work directly from me!

This is just another example of the music industry trying to come up with a new way to skim money off of somebody else's work without doing a damn thing beyond collecting handsomely. If artists are truly in favor of that, they're incredibly naive.

Lady Gaga jokes aside...

[KingAlanI]

I just knew this was going to be a Lady Gaga joke when I was halfway through the first line.

Becoming so popular (which seems to be her goal more so than money for whatever reason) does entail goofy bells and whistles and mouthbreathing-moron-sheep fans, but that's not all there is. There's plenty of steak elsewhere in the world, but there's more steak under this sizzle than usual, although it's easy for the average person to lose track of

Even her popular stuff is often better and a lot more fun than a lot of the stuff out there on the mainstream, low bar though that may be. Nevertheless, she actually can sing quite nicely; I wish there was more of her better material and it showed up more often. Speechless, You And I, various acoustic renditions of her electronic hits, (I could go on and on)

I'll even obligatory-XKCD myself: http://xkcd.com/386/ :P

The Upside

[Anonymous Coward]

Celine Dion could finally retire.

Sort of...

[KingAlanI]

Looking at the Wikipedia pages his his albums, he often has a cowriter credit alongside hired-gun producers; thus I doubt how much he actually does - it may or may not mean something, but I don't care to do further research. :P
Some non-Canadian pop stars also appear to be in this category.

There is a point here

[KingAlanI]

Nevertheless, mine and Tablizer's differing opinions on Ms. Germanotta aside, how to distribute the proceeds from such a scheme is a huge problem, something many others have also touched upon.
People will game the system, as they will any system with a notable reward involved, but common sense presumes it will be insulated from the "paper musician" stunts often joked about in such discussions
Being biased towards the mainstream music industry is a problem of the proposals put out by, well, the mainstream music industry, but I'm not sure if an anti-mainstream bias (the hipster mindset?) is the right answer either.

Nothing's perfect, but if done remotely well, such a scheme could be a great way around the P2P lawsuits and other excesses of copyright as pertaining to the music industry.

Re:There is a point here

[Graham J - XVI]

It's not so much anti-mainstream bias as much as the understanding that, in music, popularity and quality tend to be at opposite ends of the same scale. There are exceptions of course but by and large the artists that make music because they love it don't rise to the top of the mainstream. The ones that rise are the attractive/catchy/formulaic/gimmicky ones. Many of them do it for money.

Re:There is a point here

[Anonymous Coward]

I always merely saw it as the quality/popularity correlation not being as strong as we'd like, rather than negative. ;)
A lot of the mainstream does suck, don't get me wrong, but I'm willing to give credit where I feel credit is due.
I wish some of my favorite indies were more popular, but many of them, while not filling arenas, are still fairly successful.

Perhaps loving your work, being really good at it, and adding "bells and whistles" is a recipe for megasuccess. :D

Re:There is a point here

[KingAlanI]

I always merely saw it as the quality/popularity correlation not being as strong as we'd like, rather than negative. ;)
A lot of the mainstream does suck, don't get me wrong, but I'm willing to give credit where I feel credit is due.
I wish some of my favorite indies were more popular, but many of them, while not filling arenas, are still fairly successful.
Perhaps loving your work, being really good at it, and adding "bells and whistles" (to varying degrees) is a recipe for megasuccess. :D

(sibling AC was me, forgot to log in first. sorry)

VOIVOD

[Anonymous Coward]

If all this money was going to the surviving members of Voivod, I'd be all for it

If it goes to e.g. Nickelback, Barenaked Ladies, Drake, Tragically Hip, Nelly Furtado, The Guess Who, Alanis Morrisette and them lot...then I'm going to have to say fuck all y'all

antitax mania?

[KingAlanI]

"I don't personally use A, so why should I pay a cent of taxes for A" to some extent makes sense, to some extent is a subset of antitax mania. ( a matter of degree?)
Yet you probably like tax-funded activity B, and some fans of A probably feel the same way about B.

Music producers

[KingAlanI]

To be fair, the actual producers are involved in making the music itself, from high-level creative direction to being involved on the ground level of writing the songs and playing the instruments, depending on the nature of the particular project. Their additional role in coordinating the recording session is closer to useful managerial organization than the marketing suits you seem to be lambasting. :P

_Executive_ producers, now that isn't a creative role.

Thank you

[KingAlanI]

I don't mind the music industry continuing to survive if it indeed gets with the times, and what appear to be steps in the right direction should be welcomed.
The 360 does adapt to the reality that there's less money in selling recordings these days, though it can feed into label executives' penchant for abusive contracts

If Universal Music updates its circuitry and Warner & EMI hear us clearly fine by me *
* Yes, this was a reference to the lyrics of MC Lars' _Download This Song_ (one of my favorite indie's best songs); incidentally, I feel that the new independent models, although they're wonderful game-changers, add to the industry rather than completely replacing the traditional model.

I like this...

[KingAlanI]

Cool, but how does this differ from personal spending decisions except saying "spend at least $10/month"?
Also would need to determine what constitutes a valid 'musician'.

Re:I like this...

[Tragek]

Unlimited access, and musician is anyone who makes music; They have to be the ones who are putting the music into their system (or their publishers/producers/record labels... if the publisher/producer/record label screws them, it's unfortunate, but also status quo. This kind of system would likely create more indie artists, which could be good or bad, who knows), otherwise it's illegitimate piracy.

Re:I like this...

[im3w1l]

If I spend money on my friend, and he spends money on me, everyone wins!

Re:I like this...

[KingAlanI]

That's one of the kinds of shenaniganry I was trying to prevent in the process of determining who's a valid musician.
Even if the friends and relatives really are in the business, maybe there still should be anti-nepotism clauses and/or restrictions on quid-pro-quo deals like that, etc.

Re:I like this...

[KingAlanI]

What exactly do you mean by unlimited access?

I still figure the popularity of major-label stuff will carry over to an extent, though not making it worse for the indies is a key requirement for designing this system.

I listen to a wide range of stuff, but can imagine skewing my donations under this system towards the modern indies.

Great Idea!

[nukem996]

That would be great! Then every one in the world could buy an SSH account on a Canadian server and download as much as they want!

Re:Great Idea!

[Graham J - XVI]

I already do this from a seedbox in Germany. That's why I oppose this tax - they can't tell what I'm downloading anyway ;)

Or..

[zeroeth]

All the record labels could sell music on-line for a reasonable price?

For all of the technologies they have shut down, they certainly could have assimilated a few.

Still to this day, nothing beat places like mp3downloads.ru (I think that was its name, circa 2001). Pick your songs, download at whatever quality/format you wanted, priced accordingly.

People will legitimately buy something if given a fair and reasonable option.

Physical Media

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes we do. I've been buying physical media since I bought my first LP (Sgt Pepper in Mono).
I still buy 12in Albums as well as CD's.
I don't want any
  "I'm sorry Sir, you have exceeded the permitted number of times you are licenced to play this song"
(well not at the moment but after the next about EBook publishers wanting to limit the number of times an Ebook can be legally borrowed from a library, well this can't be far behind can it?)
or any form of DRM thank you very much.

I copy my CD's and only play the copy. Yeah this might be technically illegal but at least I know if my old car is stolen then I still have the originals under lock & key at home.
One of the record shops I frequent has seen a big upturn in sales of Analogue media in the past year. his biggest seller was the Flaming Lips cover of Dark Side of the Moon. Great Album.

Re:Physical Media

[turgid]

since I bought my first LP (Sgt Pepper in Mono).

Don't worry, I don't think it could have sounded any better in stereo unless someone thought it was a pizza and put it in the oven at gas mark 6.

One of the record shops I frequent has seen a big upturn in sales of Analogue media in the past year. his biggest seller was the Flaming Lips cover of Dark Side of the Moon. Great Album.

Jesus H. Christ. A medium with inferior sound quality playing music by people with no originality.

Can things possibly get any worse?

Well of course they do

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, I propose an "everybody pays me $10" plan too. Who wouldn't want other people's money for free as well?

Stealing my money.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a few things are being ignored here.
1) With a system like this, any talentless piece of trash gets money for writing songs. That means all they have to do is write crap and get money. Currently, these people better come up with music that the public likes if they want to earn anything. (Then again, seeing how popular Justin Bieber is, one could argue that the current system is broken).

2) This system should not be forced on people. Either they agree to it and are allowed to download, or they do not agree to pay the extra $10 and they can't download. Obviously, these songwriters want it forced on everyone or else they would have been trying to open a website where you can download all the music and movies you want for a $10 fee. No need to have the government enforce it on everyone through ISPs unless you want it mandatory.

3) If I pay an extra $10 to download all music and movies I want, then I do not want any monthly download and upload limit on my contract. No throttling either. Otherwise I can't download much and thus I'm being robbed of $10.

4) Supply and demand. Supply is unlimited, distributing copies is nearly cost-free. Media is not worth $10 a month. Maybe $10 a year, at most.

Nonsense.

[GameboyRMH]

This is the hook. It's catchy. You like it.

relatively cheap

[Cyko_01]

it's not that bad when you think about it. it's still cheaper then a pack of cigarettes here in Ontario, and you are only paying it once a month, not several times a week or day, like some smokers. if this legalizes P2P I'm all for it!

socan needs a better acronym

[Cyko_01]

Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada? shouldn't it be more like SCAMPC?

Screw them

[SilverJets]

I've been paying a levy on blank media for years whether I used the media for holding music or for other reasons. Now they are proposing that I should pay more money for my internet access because I *might* download some crappy song? They can blow it out of their @sses.

Maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the money is really given to the "artist" . But burocacy will alway be too expensive...

We're looking at this all wrong...

[hallux.sinister]

I think I'll record/release a few albums in Canada, (never mind I cannot sing, play an instrument, or even whistle, it'll just be me banging out random notes on a synthesizer,) and sit back and start collecting my share of royalties. I suggest everyone else do the same. Eh?

This is just wrong

[cj_church]

I am Canadian and I don't download any music from Canadian artists because I think they suck I don't like that type of music so why the hell should I pay them. First It was the CRTC and now its SOCAN.

hell no..

[SuperDre]

Why would I have to pay $10 a month extra just because some other sshl wants to 'steal' music.. and just as with the tax on blank cd's/dvd's, how are they going to split the money with all those creative people... I know a company which also tried to get some money from that pot of gold because they made content, but they where turned down. So how are you as a songwriter/artist/moviemaker/whatever going to get the money...

who provides the content

[Anonymous Coward]

What currently non-existent file sharing source does this come from. I am sure that you would not actually be able to download all of the content you want. Non-Canadian artists would not be sharing in this redistribution of wealth. We would not be able to download content created by non-Canadian artists. If you are unable to make a living at something, then perhaps you are just not that good. Even if you are a good musician, you may not be a good entertainer, even if you are a good entertainer you may not be much of a business person. If you want to be successful you need to be at least 2 out of 3 of these things. This is not only the rule for Canadians, but for indepemdent artists everywhere.

Bill C-32 - Downloads are illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

The Harper Government is in the process of passing Bill C-32. Downloads will be illegal, and RIAA extortion tactics will occur.

Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh this is ridiculous. I haven't pirated music in ages. In the past I did download a lot, but since itunes and amazon sell mp3s directly, mostly if I want a song that much I just buy it from one of them. But the actual songs that I want for the past few years has been zero. Music just doesn't seem as good these days, and for the songs that I like a little bit, they overplay them on the radio until I am sick of them.

One-size-fits-all fees are a terrible idea

[GPS Pilot]

Why should a casual listener who downloads a dozen songs per month pay the same amount as a music-obsessed person who's amassing a multi-gigabyte collection?

Why not pay for the air you breath

[Anonymous Coward]

That's it make everyone pay regardless if they never download any music. Hell! We are already paying fees on every blank CD or DVD r-- why not ISP. I'll drop my ISP and go back to reading the news from newspaper or some other media.

I have never downloaded any music

[aklinux]

Why should my ISP bill go up?

And if you don't give a shit about music ?

[RockDoctor]

If you never download the waste of low-power seismic records, never listen to it, and don't give a shit if all musicians were to starve to death tomorrow, I'd still have to pay?

I can smell the suits for a rebate starting already.

Where does it stop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone deserves acknowledgment for their products, but I am not in favor of the idea. This is just another instance of dictatorship. Why must I pay for the actions of someone else. 120.00 seem like peanuts in comparison to the amount of money the music industry looses each year but to force compliance on everyone, I think that that is somewhat unfair. As someone mentioned above, music isn't the only media that can be easily downloaded illegally. What about the other industries? Where does it stop? If the music industry should be allowed to get a cut, shouldn't everyone else who's produced something?

$10/month for indie music would be awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

*Looks at music downloaded in the past month.*

So, a remix CD only sold at a con in Japan, a CD by a Swedish metal band that broke up around 2005, and the OST for a video game not released in North America.

The third one might be able to buy through an importer (didn't find one on a brief search), but the other two I've been unable to find legally. I'd gladly fork over $10 a month if it went to all the weird little bands whose music I do download!

This seems like a good time to mention that

[geekzealot1982]

Canada is America's hat.