UK Royalty Group Wants ISPs To Pay For Pirating Customers 289
Idbar writes "A group representing British songwriters and composers will on Wednesday call for the introduction of a levy on broadband providers based on the amount of pirated music they allow to pass through their networks. Will Page, chief economist at PRS for Music, will argue at a Westminster conference that a piracy fee would better align the financial interests of internet service providers with rights holders at a time when the two industries are at odds over who should bear the costs of online song swapping."
Re:Just another theft (Score:2, Informative)
My money is already stolen if I record the sound of my own band on my own CD. I don't need another theft if I want to let someone hear my songs on the net. Off course, the stolen money should go to the rights holder, but as a rights holder to my own songs, I never saw even a cent from it. And my songs have been played in public and broadcasted.
I feel for you. I own an internet radio station and totally support what people release under the Creative Commons license. http://www.creativecommons.org/ [creativecommons.org] I refuse to pay the PPS fees and have had many arguements even with my own music just like yourself so please do not worry about it too much. My advice when it comes around to copyright issues for your own music; is take a leaf out of my book. Mail the master copy or the CD of your work to yourself along with a letter to yourself by Royal Mail signed for Special Delivery £5.95. When it arrives never open it, keep the signed for ticket and just store it, if you ever up in court over trivial issues, you must present the envelope along with the signed for ticket for forensic evaluation and that it has never been opened and only the judge can open in in a legal capacity. Who wins the case? You do! Good Luck!
They mean, a group representing big business (Score:5, Informative)
I work with digital sales accounts.
Every time you download a track from Itunes most of your money goes to, the government as tax (in the UK), the retailer (Itunes in this case), the distributor, and the label. The artist gets maybe 5% of what you pay.
Unbelievable but that's how it is.
Don't let these liars and crooks fool you into thinking otherwise.
Re:They mean, a group representing big business (Score:3, Informative)
no usually what happens is the artist gets a lump sum and then royalties on top for each sale. the lump sum buys their rights for cents on the dollar in the hope their work will make it big.
on their own there's a high certainty of failure for a new starter.
No. What happens is the artist gets a large "lump sum", but that sum is actually an open "loan" in the small print of the contract, and the label can just keep making shit up to add to the "loan". The artist gets a small amount of royalties while most of the income goes to the label. However, the artist has to pay back the loan out of their royalties (small print!). So basically, the label passes the checkout twice: they get most of the profit from sales, AND they recoup the lump sum loan from artists. Only if the artist sells a LOT of records do they start earning a little real money, and even at that time the label is still making more money than the artists.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:1, Informative)
On the other side, usually the telcos are national companies: guess who the UK government is most likely to give preference in hearing their plea? To British Telecom (UK) or to Sony BMG (Japan)?
Oh but it's not "Sony BMG (Japan)" it's "Your Local National Rights Management Organisation". For example in Germany there are the GEMA (music), the VG Wort (print) and other leeches who pretend to represent "small, local, poor creatives".
They force laws down our throats that make us pay a fee on music players, computers, printers, scanners, blank CDs/DVDs, smartphones ... anything that might possibly be used to duplicate copyrighted works. They have been getting away with this shit for decades and the IT industry (hardware, ISPs, etc.) was unable to do anything about it.
Silly you... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Rights Holder (Score:3, Informative)
It is a massive failure of the (civil) justice system that these laws are not enforced.
There is no failure of the justice system in this case. The laws say that the rights holder must sue to recover damages. If they don't choose to do this, then that's their problem. Likewise, if they choose to sue with shaky evidence, it's also their problem.
Meanwhile, look at the group that wants money in this case: songwriters and composers. These people already receive money from compulsory licensing [wikipedia.org], and generally receive nothing when a CD (or track) is sold.
So, this is just a money grab for these people because they aren't losing anything due to file sharing.