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Collective Licensing for Web-Based Music Distribution
Posted by
Soulskill
on Thu Mar 27, 2008 09:01 PM
from the thinking-hard-so-you-don't-have-to dept.
from the thinking-hard-so-you-don't-have-to dept.
Two weeks ago we discussed a proposal from music industry veteran Jim Griffin to implement a monthly fee from ISPs in exchange for the legal distribution of copyrighted music. Now, quinthar brings news that Warner Music Group has hired Griffin with the intention to make that proposal a reality. Warner wants Griffin to establish a collective licensing deal with ISPs that would let the ISPs stop worrying about their legal responsibilities for file-sharing while contributing to a pool of money (potentially up to $20 billion per year) that would be distributed amongst the music industry.
"Griffin says that in just the few weeks since Warner began working on this plan, the company has been approached by internet service providers 'who want to discharge their risk.' Eventually, advertising could subsidize the entire system, so that users who don't want to receive ads could pay the fee, and those who don't mind advertising wouldn't pay a dime. 'I.S.P.'s want to distinguish themselves with marketing," Griffin says. "You can only imagine that an I.S.P. that marketed a 'fair trade' network connection would see a marketing advantage.'"
Related Stories
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News: $5 Per Month Fee Proposed For Legal Music P2P 528 comments
sneakyimp writes "Both Wired and Ars Technica have reports on Jim Griffin's proposal that ISPs charge each broadband customer $5 per month to subsidize the ailing music industry. The resulting fund would ostensibly 'compensate songwriters, performers, publishers and music labels.'
Although no specific version of the proposal has been referenced, a number of controversies are inherent to the plan: How is the money really divided? What happens when the MPAA, the Business Software Alliance, and various other industry groups want their own surcharge added? What about the supposed majority of broadband customers who never download illegal music? Griffin discussed the plan further at SXSW . We've previously discussed a similar proposal from the Songwriters Association of Canada.
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Who Says I wanna buy your crap? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who says that just because I use the Internet I ever listen to your music?
Get out of my fucking wallet!
what about TV? (Score:3, Interesting)
Because the flat tax you pay for it and that helps fun programs is exactly the same as this one (okay, more advertisement contributes to it, and it's not only for music; but still).
Would you consider that forced buying?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In my mind this is no better than extorting ISPs.
Why not address the problem by capping upload limits from customers? I remember my ISP taking people down for hosting websites on their home computer. I can't see that being different.
Re:what about TV? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:what about TV? (Score:5, Insightful)
Still, here I don't see people complaining about that flat fee just because they don't watch all channels, or because they don't watch them all the time. And of course that's in part because that tax is pretty low, just as the music fee could be (for example, if it was the avarage money spent spent by customer on music per month, or even better, the avarage actually given to artist; plus probably some money for marketing).
Maybe a better example would be Disneyland: you pay to enter, and that pays for the haunted mansion, even if you never go there.
Or a second example: buying a swiss army knife with a can openner, even if you never use it. Of course from your point of veiw it would be logical not to get a can openner, but as a global system it is more economic to "force" everyone to get the can opener, so that price get lower by volume.
Of course this doesn't solve the problem of deciding what artist gets what amount of that money, but it still is a system that economicaly makes sense; charging 99cents on itune for every song does not.
Parent
Re:what about TV? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is an example of bundling (i.e. you always have to buy "a" and "b" together). Economically bundling always favors the seller giving them more power and money (the reasons are to complicated to explain here; look it up in an Econ book). It is not illegal, but it can really disadvantage the buyer and when the seller is running a de facto monopoly (as most non-metropolitan, US, broadband ISPs are) they could be hauled up on anti-trust allegations.
For example, most people wouldn't object to the grocery store bundling batteries with their flashlights, but if the water company required you to buy a car with your water service then people would squeal. Here it is all shades of gray depending on how related the items being bundled are and whether the buyer has alternative to buying the bundled items. Personally I think this steps across the line. For me the internet is a utility and I really don't want it to be bundled (e.g. the AOL portal model) with things that I have no intention of using. After all who is to say there shouldn't also be a Slashdot tax on ISPs to pay for running the Slashdot site.
Parent
Re:what about TV? (Score:5, Informative)
The difference here is between choosing to go to Disneyland (and pay it or not), and being forced to pay for Disneyland. It's not a question of where the money goes, its whether you have the choice of how to spend it. The system doesn't work because the cost will be passed to the consumer, not the ones tossing aside their liability. Additionally, what does this do for non-label artists? There are issues on both sides of the table and why this doesn't work.
Or analogy two: Your choice to buy the swiss army knife or not, are you saying that you should just pay the fee for it, or you can choose to buy it? That is the bigger deal here. It's not where the magic marketing numbers are (which are shown that most people don't click advertising)
I hate to say it, but I would be seriously offended by a "pay for being a criminal" type subscription charge for the reasons above, what it implies, and all it is doing is degrading service. I really hate to support big business but by increasing the cost for the same service that is the same thing as degrading it due to lack of efficiency. Sometimes this happens naturally but artificially like this is just lining MPAA/RIAA/IFPI pockets at the simultaneous expense of every consumer who is legitimately or not using a service.
May as well just label it a "profit charge" and put that into your service bill for anything...except for the reality of just how much backlash that would create. Or maybe they'll try to get it passed by calling it "opt-out" or some garbage.
There are plenty of articles out there about ad revenue, associating things like "just because you watch TV" = money in a media associates pocket are unaccurate as far as ad revenue. Unless someone explicitly provides you a way to track a sale back to a TV ad, you can't really associate a sales increase from strictly an ad (especially if there is more than 1 source of adds, and even with fairly stable business). Reason here is that markets are volatile, and sales is just as volatile. People can change on the drop of a hat, because the sky is blue today, etc in the same way that a stock does. http://techdirt.com/articles/20060504/1941211.shtml [techdirt.com] provides a decent example of that.
Parent
Re:what about TV? (Score:5, Interesting)
If this were put in place, it would be less than a week before the ISP bill had hundreds of additional charges:
Music Fee $5
Movie Fee $10.50
TV Fee $7
News Fee $12.32
Voice Transmission Fee $3
Software Fee $15
Slashdot Fee $3
Google Fee $6
Photo Fee $5
Book Fee $8
etc, etc, etc, every single industry that has piracy exposure, or distributes anything online would get in on this racket ASAP, and it would suddenly cost $500/mo to get a simple internet connection. Whether you used any of the above services or not.
Personally, I do not download music, I do not listen to any music except for the music I purchased on CDs. I haven't purchased a new CD in nearly 8 years as nothing that has come out has made me the least bit interested. I detest the music industry, and I refuse to give them a dime. If they manage to push this through, I would be forced against my will to give these evil bastards my hard earned money.
Parent
Re:what about TV? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a more accurate description of what is happening.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Who Says I wanna buy your crap? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
as many have pointed out, there's no reason for a person who never downloads music to be indemnified against music piracy. Of course, the delusional belief that everyone consumes their product (and therefore should pay more for not paying them enough already, a cogent syllogism if ever i did hear one..) is the real problem with the record industry, and i doubt even implementing this syste
we yes but .... (Score:3, Insightful)
First they came for my mp3s.. (Score:4, Funny)
Then they came for my tv shows, but I did not download those, so I did nothing.
Then they came for my porn and I was sunk
careful (Score:5, Insightful)
In any case, any proposal like this should have a clear and well-defined path in it towards dismantling the RIAA and making its members obsolete; a world in which music can be shared and distributed freely does not require record companies in the traditional sense. The only thing these people still can hold on to should be the old copyrights they managed to obtain from less lucky artists.
I want my cut! (Score:5, Insightful)
Monthly internet bill:
50.00 - connection fee
5.00 - music extortion fee
5.50 - movies extortion fee
8.25 - television extortion fee
3.00 - print media extortion fee
4.00 - software warez extortion fee
2.00 - images possibly out of copyright
4.00 - independent music fee
3.00 - documentaries fee
2.50 - guitar tabs/sheet music
3.00 - song lyrics
2.00 - spambot fee (just in case I'm a node)
7.00 - fee for everyone else wanting my pound of flesh
total: $100 per month, and I think I'm being quite generous
Where will this stop? If the record labels get their fee, I want my fee for everyone that downloaded that one picture from my blog that I told you that you shouldn't save but you did anyways. You can just send me those $.02 per subscriber per month, or I'll take a flat fee of $3,000,000 - thanks.
Did They Hire Ex-SCO Staffers? (Score:5, Insightful)
- "The company has been approached by internet service providers 'who want to discharge their risk.'" Fuckin' bullshit. Total horseshit. Lies, lies, lies. Classic smokescreen to try to create some kind of peer pressure. There is no risk. There are no such ISPs. That's why they must go nameless.
- What ISP would open themselves to this kind of blackmail? Wouldn't that be an obvious signal to the movie industry, the book publishing industry, the software industry, "come get in line and bilk us for money, we're weak and easily intimidated"?
- "Eventually, advertising could subsidize the entire system, so that users who don't want to receive ads could pay the fee, and those who don't mind advertising wouldn't pay a dime." What the fuck? How do those ads get on my system from the ISP? Across Firefox? Through my email? In my WOW packets? Take over my OS? WTF is that?
This guy should be in protective custody, under observation for a few weeks. He's clearly lost his grip on reality and must be a danger to himself. But then, that didn't stop SCO.
Fair distribution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately then, it becomes about subsidizing an industry in a manner that provides absolutely no incentive for any major label to make desirable music. They can produce whatever they want and take the flat fee, preventing us from voting with our wallet. As a result, music would become even more controlled by the major labels than it already is now. And that's a particularly disgusting thought.
What risks? (Score:3, Insightful)
THe last I heard, ISPs have a safe harbor as long as they just act as a conduit.
As such, any ISP that worries about their liabilities for the issue are wasting their time on nothing. To the best of my knowledge, there are no risks for the ISPs.
What are those people smoking? (Score:3, Interesting)
Much like the surcharge on cassettes or recordable CDs, they'll take the cash and insist on more and more. It's all for the artists, but the artists never see any of the money - instead, the labels continue to figure out ways to cut the artist's share even more.
This will go on and on and they'll never be satisfied. The only real answer it to say NO and put these leeches out of their misery. Will our corporate overlords have the backbone to do this? I don't know...
In Canada (Score:3, Funny)
Wait a minute?!
Familiar practice (Score:3, Insightful)
The death rattle... (Score:3, Interesting)
Honestly, the music landscape is changing; the format is changing. It isn't a bad thing that corporations will have to find other sources of revenue due to society changing the way it obtains/listens to/communicates the media of music.
There may be less money in music after the dust has settled but extortion is not the answer. Diversify or fall.
Its interesting. Usually changes in industry require new technologies - new hardware technologies. Think digital cameras vs film. Alot of film corporations (agfa, konica) no longer exist in that aftermath. This is subtlety different; it is a change in social thinking. If 80% of kids pirate, then it should not be considered pirating. It should be legalized and the new way of doing things. There are new ways to make money from this.
Where will the corporations put the money gained from isps? Obviously into new lawsuits.
ISPs legal responsibilities? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sort of sounds like a scare tactic; I can't imagine ISPs falling for it - aren't they 'common carriers' specifically so the responsibility for what people do with their network _doesn't_ fall on them?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If the ISPs start collecting for music downloads, then one might expect them to learn how to differentiate between music and lolcats pictures.
And as soon as they demonstrate that ability, then every organ
No. Just no. (Score:5, Interesting)
And then there were a few providers who wouldn't pay. They set up a new network where this practice was prohibited, at the time called the Othernet. Since it was a new network they could use the open technologies of the Internet, but avoid the chains of legacy technology like IP v4.
This proved to be the revolution that transformed intellectual property. Because the Othernet required secure Onion Routing protocols and packets protected by public key encryption fast ASICs to make the requirement fast and reliable were developed. The logic from these ASICs became embedded in the logic for Othernet core routers. The features were found to be popular on Internet and intranet routers as well, and so became an industry standard feature no vendor could avoid.
On the Othernet it was impossible to determine who sent what to whom. Naturally this became a haven for the criminal element, the disaffected and the insane. Here also though was a channel for open discussion free from fear of oppression. The Othernet begat Radio Free Othernet and the numerous cells responsible for the October Rebellion culminating in the Halloween event referred to in your history books as "the day they hanged the lawyers."
The market for the classic Internet shrivelled as its proprietors folded one by one. Eventually the last desperate holdouts were absorbed into the Othernet. Although the official name for the network is still the Othernet for casual purposes it is now referred to as the Internet.
If RadioHead or NIN would act quickly (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Go to the NIN site, see endorsements for a dozen new indie bands, with an array of download options much like NIN is presently offering. And NIN takes a small cut (say 10% of sales) of the piggybackers' income, in trade for increasing their visibility beyond any hope they'd ever have even with a big-label contract.
WHAT THE FUCK (Score:4, Insightful)
How is it decided who gets the money, what are we paying for?
This is just another way of passing the costs on to us, however this time we don't get a valuable product in return, and there is no incentive to produce. This will inevitably cripple the music industry more than file sharing could ever do, and it will hurt the ISP industry as well (Unless it's voluntary, in which case it won't last long, since there are significant economic incentives to not do it).
I can't believe someone even considered this.
No legitimate business would ever consider this, only Government would consider a revenue stream like this.
This is pissing me off heaps right now, and I haven't even read the article. I hope this is another one of those "Slashdot went crazy and badly worded the article" moments.
Someone needs to smack them over the head with the wealth of nations followed by free to choose.
$20 billion (Score:5, Informative)
The entire music industry gross revenues are about $14 billion. So what we'll do is hand the RIAA $20 billion pure profit for sitting back and not doing any work in particular on top of them continuing to collecting most of the $14 billion they get now minus whatever speculative amount legal P2P might actually diminish those $14 billion revenues.
I'm glad to see we've finally found a fair solution.
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Big Fat Paulie (Score:3, Insightful)
Bad premise (Score:3, Insightful)
Another broken idea from the music industry (Score:3, Insightful)
My ISP provides a connection to the internet for me. They don't force me to use some damned AOL-like portal. I run my own servers (web/mail) so I don't have to connect to their mail service to gather my email. So... where are all these advertisements that are intended to subsidize the music industry supposed to be coming from? I can't see how I'd even be seeing them. Yet I'm possibly going to have to pay to avoid seeing them.
Yet another proposal for dipping into my wallet coming from an industry that still has no idea how the Internet is supposed to work. I'm having trouble figuring out who further from understanding this: the RIAA or Ted Stevens.
Painful Withdrawal (Score:3, Insightful)
These bastards have sat on their asses for over fifty years, reaming artists and raping customers and enjoying tons of cash.
Those days are over, but the junkies can't conceive of a world in which they don't get their easy fix.
It's repugnant.
Re:this is great! (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So ... what are the ISPs paying for, if they aren't the ones being sued and they aren't the ones sharing the music?
I can see it like through a crystal ball ... the first user of one of these ISPs who gets sued, their lawyer is going to demand an accounting of all the ISP fees - and since the user is paying the fee (indirectly), the user is entitled to the benefit of indemnification.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Thats what I thought at first, the RIAA would be penalizing people who aren't pirates.
but... from the article..
a controversial plan to bundle a monthly fee into consumers' internet-service bills for unlimited access to music.
Warner's plan would have consumers pay an additional fee--maybe $5 a month--bundled into their monthly internet-access bill in exchange for the right to freely download, upload, copy, and
Re:Complete change of strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Complete change of strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, I don't see why everyone's got such a hard-on for protecting the music industry. Maybe we're obsessed with this idea of the small musician being able to make it big, maybe we just like the sound of a corporation making money, but seriously, guys, SERIOUSLY.
CUT THIS SHIT OUT. I'm sick and fucking tired of people defending the damn RIAA while they continue to make off with money they didn't earn. Did they compose the song? Is it part of their soul? A creation of their own? No! They sit there and exploit their artists so they can exploit their consumers. It cheapens the value of art, it destroys the beauty of sound, and it fucks us all over in a giant corporatist blood orgy.
Why is it corporatist? The entire legal backing behind a record distribution company- the idea of COPYRIGHT, is a law intended to CREATE a market for something unmarketable. Why can the music industry continue to use old, outdated media (CDs, record stores) when there is a BETTER media around? (FLAC, the internet)
Because we are CORPORATISTS. We feel like we have the right nay the OBLIGATION to protect something someone made up in their heads. Fuck that shit. Music is meant to be enjoyed, not exploited.
Seriously, FUCK that shit.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't get it. How's that?
Agreed. I get pretty pissed about it myself. I just get kinda annoyed when people think that it's an excuse to break copyright law, or the
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
All of which is an interesting debate, but not a factor in this push. This is just an extension of the tax on blank media that goes to the music industry. I don't want this and I don't see why I should get dragged into it. But the whole system is dependent on not having some ISP users choosing not to opt in (because if the aim is stopping piracy, how would it work otherwise). Additionally, a system like this would be open to large scale abuse in increasing the power of the big labels, potentially raise pri
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So now the sense of my rhetoric and reasoning is now conditional on the identity of my employers*?
* Which is not anyone with a vested interest in copyright, and they certainly don't pay to spread my opinions (just to head off those trigger-happy witch-hunters who accuse anyone with a contrary opinion of being an RIAA-shill).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically, physical property is already a theoretical concept independent from tangible objects. You may own that kilogram of potatoes, but there is nothing physical in your ownership. If someone steals your potatoes, they don't instantly own them; you still do (you just no longer have possession of them). Just because it's easy to take property doesn't mean that we should align ownership with possession. That would destroy the point of property and negate the vast positives of defining property. It would also be cheaper in terms of enforcement and chances for civil system abuses (ala RIAA lawsuits) to ignore property, but we have decided that those costs are vastly outweighed by the benefits. If as many people were to commit physical theft as people currently commit copyright infringement, I would bet my bottom dollar there would be moves to abolish physical property to be in synch with the fickle nature of possession. IP is relatively new, and difficult to enforce. Therefore it is not currently as entrenched in our morality, and a community of infringers has been allowed to form in the absence of adequate enforcement. IP could reflect society if society started to support IP law, like we did with the concept of property, and like physical property, we could benefit from it's addition to property law. The current abnormally high rate of abuse once it's refined and enforced properly, like physical property is. To quote the old propaganda "You wouldn't steal a car..."
No, no, and NO! IP (Imaginary Property) is *nothing* like tangible property. It's not property at all, any more than (as Thomas Jefferson analogized) a the flame on your candle is property. Share your flame with me, and we are both enriched and neither of us are deprived.
If you don't make the payments on your IP, it cannot be repossessed. If I have a good memory, I can keep your IP in my head - will you have the courts compel brain surgery against infringers to recover the stolen property? How much
Re:Complete change of strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, this isn't collecting royalties, this is the traditional and dying music industry looking for free money.
Why not tax electricity for the RIAA? After all, we all know music pirates have to use electricity to make illegal copies,
therefore all users of electricity must be music pirates! (This is the kind of logic we're talking about here)..
This blanket tax thing is an incredibly bad idea.
Ask Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead how they feel about such a tax, after showing they can make far more money without the "help" of a corrupt and bloated music industry.
Parent
Re:Complete change of strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
What about software developers, movie makers, authors of books, magazines and newspaper articles, photographers, web page authors including bloggers, etc? Don't they deserve a share of the cash too?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do I still need to pay?
How Does One Opt Out? (Score:3)
Even if they do implement this system in some sort of ideal way, it still does not solve the caveat emptor problem. How can people
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe Steve Albini has the procedure for that outlined here:
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html [negativland.com]
In other words, if you're not signed to a major label, fugettaboutit!
You think they want to share any money with the competition?
Cheers!
Strat