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."
Rights Holder (Score:5, Insightful)
Silly me, thinking that it should be up to the rights holder to protect their rights.
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Jeez, what are they going to think of next. Just amazing.
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Exactly. This is like charging phone companies for any scams done through their lines. Or charging gun dealers for each gun they sell that is used in a crime. Or charging car dealers for each car they sell that is used in some sort of crime. etc. etc. etc.
Re:Rights Holder (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's like charging road builders for speeding tickets the police failed to collect. The end result would be roads of such quality, that you can barely drive on them, let alone speed.
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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 pe
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Re:Rights Holder (Score:5, Insightful)
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Isn't that what we have?
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And it fails miserably at that, having never once upheld my rights. But I guess some citizens are more equal than others.
It's getting harder and harder to see the state as anything but the feudal lord's private enforcer.
As opposed to our current society where only the strong have rights.
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Right, if you think western civilization is so horrible why don't you move to africa where they don't have any rights and have to deal with real feudal warlords?
The truth of the matter is that the state is providing you with more rights then you can count, you're just too spoiled to notice.
Re:Rights Holder (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the entire reason we have government. The most basic service that government provides is protection, when that service is not provided then you get anarchy and your rights quickly become "none whatsoever". Just look at post-invasion Bagdad or post-hurricane New Orleans.
The reason I said that the government provides your rights is because ultimately they're the only ones that can enforce them, what would be the alternatives, pay the corporations to do it? I'm sure they'd be honest, vigilante justice? that works GREAT.
Sure it's to some extent problematic since some of the rights we expect to be enforced is the freedom from the government, but that's why we have to hold the government accountable. However I'll maintain that thinking that the government is not enforcing any of your rights is profoundly ignorant.
simplistic (Score:3, Insightful)
There are many different kinds of rights you have and many different ways in which they get enforced.
The government does enforce criminal law all by itself, which involve some violations of your person or property. The government does not automatically enforce civil law; you need to take action yourself. If you don't take action, you won't get anything. And some of those actions don't even involve the government: you may have to submit to binding arbitration to get your rights.
Copyright and patents aren'
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Um no. It is up to the state to protect and enforce the rights of its citizens. Otherwise we'd had a society where only the rights of the strong is worth anything.
There's a bit of both. It's unrealistic to expect the state to do all of the work of enforcing the rights of all people at all times, so there is a hefty dose of personal responsibility that we expect from people. E.g., in intellectual property, the rightsholder generally has to complain about alleged violations, the state is not going to go looking for them on its own. Or with personal property, we expect people to take precautions like locking their doors and not leaving valuables unattended. And of cours
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My dear fellow, every Brit knows that it is "Kiss my arse"
I have no desire to be near a donkey
Re:Rights Holder (Score:5, Insightful)
A federal offense ? In the UK ? That's new for me.
Re:Rights Holder (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah; that whole thing about being the 51st state isn't actually true, it just feels like it sometimes...
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(Smiley emoticon included to warn the humor-deficient among us that I'm just joking. Apologies to all non-humor-deprived slashdotters for having to read this disclaimer.)
Right. That's going to work well. Sure. (Score:5, Insightful)
> ISPs that have knowledge
They can't have knowledge of infringement because only the rightsholder knows what licenses he has given. The ISP doesn't know that. Oh, and real infringement can only be decided in a court of law because of those pesky exceptions like fair use/dealing.
> or notice of infringement
Great, so we're in the DMCA-mode, where it's trivially easy to game the system because there is no real penalty for delivering a mistaken notice of infringement?
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Ask the rights holders for a list of MD5's. That ought to take care of the problem.
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You fell for the exact problem GP pointed out. You can't make a blacklist of known infringing files, because infringement depends on both the data and the parties involved in the data transfer. And a whitelist of everything anyone is allowed to transfer to anyone else would be infeasibly large.
I guess you could still be proposing one or the other be implemented half-assedly and just not care about all the collateral damage.
Re:Right. That's going to work well. Sure. (Score:4, Funny)
well great .. no really... (Score:5, Insightful)
If i'm going to paying a mothly fee for pirated music, i'll be sure to download my allocation's worth every month, after i've then paid for it then haven't i?
Re:well great .. no really... (Score:5, Insightful)
- Legally downloaded music
- Donations to great internet radio
- Last.FM all- you-can-eat subscription
- Concert and festival tickets
- Monthly fees for radio (comes with cable)
- Tax on my blank CDs and MP3 player
- And newest proposal: tax the internet
There are countless ways they want our money for music made by others... But somehow I am still a criminal who owns them a gazillion for downloading some music??? When will this madness end?
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Not to mention listening to adds, the proceeds of which are partly used to pay license fees for radio stations.
No, it doesnt concern an actual cash-flow, but given how annoying adds mostly are (and that they themselves add zero value to the listener most of the time), i would consider that paying for the music
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I bought an SD card the other day. On the invoice it listed the RIAA tax separately, it's the first time I've seen that done.
If I've paid in advance for the pirated music I'm supposedly going to put on it, I might as well go ahead and do so, right?
Re:well great .. no really... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:well great .. no really... (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'd just like to add one justification that does work:
- I've already bought it but don't feel like infecting my computer with some company's malware, by actually installing it from cd. And DRM is more likely to infect my computer than warez nowadays thanks to Sony BMG and others.
No further prosecution? (Score:4, Insightful)
If this would mean that no further prosecution of end users would be allowed then this may not be such a bad idea. The levy would be passed on to consumers making our connections slightly more expensive but I'd pay more money to not be hassled about file sharing.
Re:No further prosecution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? Only slightly more expensive?
Think more along the lines of, well, each file going through any file sharing method, probably includes at least one song, so that'll be a US dollar [or like amount]. Now multiply the number of files flowing through the ISP to all it's subscribers each month times $1 = monthly levy.
This number is unlikely to be acceptable to the ISP's subscribers.
A smaller number, like say, $10 or $15/month/subscriber [roughly what subscription music services charge] is a no-go, because that is for renting the music for a month. File downloads don't expire, so it's only fair that they are charged as purchases instead.
Of course, no need to track which specific songs are downloaded, or even if the file is a music file [or contains music], as ALL the money stops at the labels, rather than say, even paying the couple percent royalties to artists for the music.
Re:No further prosecution? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not in favor of giving some organization, that does not represent ALL rightsholders, money for counting bits going through my connection. If they however can sort the bits into nice buckets so I can clearly see who they belong to, than it might work. I'd prefer an organization like this on my monthly bill:
1) total amount of bits downloaded
2) number of copyrighted bits downloaded
3) number of copyrighted bits downloaded without permission of the rightsholder
4) number of copyrighted bits downloaded without permission of the rightsholder represented by this organisation
Plot them in a nice graph, with green, yellow, orange and red bars, so I know which flavor I downloaded the most. /sarcasm
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Indeed. And if all holders are represented, that should be a nice bonus for open source authors. If we're applying blanket transfer taxes, then it would be reasonable that all producers got compensated and incentivized. Hey, maybe even us commenters could get our cut.
so I know which flavor I downloaded the most.
If you're an average internet dweller, from what I've read it's probably the pink pr0n bar. Which of course means that any 'fair' distribution of royalties will never be implemented; it'd become one
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Dear god, now I'm suddenly in favor of this proposal.
Pr0n tax ftw!
Of course there would have to be public polls to vote for the best content, which should get the most compensation.
Or it could become part of the political parties' program. Democrats could promote child porn for their christian voters, and democrats... bestialism for the hippies? There's still so much to investigate... I suggest a ministry of pr0n to be created right now.
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Silly you... (Score:3, Informative)
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yep, its mostly the same as some nations have had on the sale of things like blank cassette tapes and CD-Rs for decades.
now if the media companies want it both ways, any sane judge should tell them to get lost.
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Plus, my ISP will love me seeding everything I have, and downloading absolutely everything I can all day, every day. It won't hit their profits at all...
Conflicting Ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
Which would be fine in principle if the PRS were the only game in town, but they're not.
So you'd have the PRS collecting their piracy levy from users (via the ISPs) and the BPI suing the same users (and ISPs if they can wangle it) for the same piracy, while doubtless also collecting a levy on blank media just in case someone puts some pirated stuff on it. Presumably if you then posted that media to someone the PRS would want to collect a levy from the Royal Mail for sending pirated stuff via the post.
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Yup, what we need is a self appointed super-umbrella organisation which will take it upon itself to speak for the self appointed normal-umbrella organisations.
Since I came up with the idea, I'm obviously the best person to run it. I'll collect the super-tax from ISPs - and mp3 player, CD/DVD, USB stick and hard drive manufacturers, hell, from headphone manufacturers. Don't worry, I'll be super-reliable, and pass all of the revenue on to the normal-umbrella groups, less a reasonable deduction for my expe
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super-umbrella organisation
Instant resident-evil flashback, Umbrella-corporation, what could go wrong?
Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
That makes about as much proportional sense as a crazy local militia demanding the national army hand over all their tanks and missiles, because "we paid for some of those with our taxes".
However extravagant the audio media monopolies are represented - they're economically dwarfed by the telecom organizations. Their argument to shift the burden of, well pretty much whatever they can imagine, over to the bank accounts of the entire telecom industry is just absurd on its face, and isn't the kind of fight even a larger media ownership group could win.
It's one thing to ask for the moon, in order to settle for something else - but this seems a game they could get hurt for playing.
Ryan Fenton
Gotta pay the piper somehow (Score:2)
In the past - and possibly still today - there was a levy charged on cassette tapes (remember them?) which was paid to some copyright group - the Performing Artists or something.
This wasn't terribly high, so was barely noticeable.
You could argue this would be a reasonable way to pay for content. It probably would not cost all that much.
Because somehow, someone, somewhere has to pay for making the content (movies cost a lot to make, no matter what technology they use). There needs to be a functioning busines
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Because somehow, someone, somewhere has to pay for making the content (movies cost a lot to make, no matter what technology they use). There needs to be a functioning business model somehow. Currently it's all rather nasty - buy my movies on DVD or I'll chase you, frighten you, and sue you. No fun (and watching "legit" movies is less pleasant because of all the "Don't pirate this movie" stuff at the beginning). It's no good yelling "data wants to be free" - someone has to put the data together in the first place. And that someone, whether they be Madonna, Brad Pitt, Bill Gates - or me, deserves to be paid for their labour in doing that.
So where am I going with this? Well, the Internet has broken the business model of music, movies, and tv programs. Software and books are still hanging in there, surprisingly. You can argue they were bad business models, but they did work, and gave us some great works of entertainment (art?).
Times change, business models must change to keep up with the times. There are many instances in history of new innovation "breaking" business models for industries, did we try to legislate that business model into making sense? No, the members of that industry either found a new business model or they slowly died out.
The entertainment industry shouldn't get any special treatment here, they have ignored new innovation and tried to pretend it wouldn't affect them. Now, when they have been left behind and
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
However extravagant the audio media monopolies are represented - they're economically dwarfed by the telecom organizations.
Telco companies may be bigger but they are not as well connected because their main "product" isn't lobbyism. I am not suprised that these rights management abominations get away with everything they ask for in our corrupt political systems.
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)?
Just another theft (Score:5, Insightful)
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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 fo
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"Very clever, Mr NSN. Now, prove to the court that the envelope was sealed at the time of posting and that you didn't just mail yourself a Special Delivery package unsealed, in which you later placed the work you claim to hold copyright to."
UK Copyright Service site with more info on "Poor Man's Copyright" [copyrightservice.co.uk]
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Place special delivery sticker over envelope flap at time of posting.
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Are you going to pay for a forensic scientist to take samples of the glue used to seal the envelope, and hold the sticker in place, to prove that it's not just Pritt-stick'd down after unsealing it?
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A decent lawyer will point out that the envelope could have been sealed later, and the whole thing will fall apart. We're not talking about a murder investigation with hundreds of man-hours in investigation. This is a hypothetical civil case between a lone music creator and another (possibly larger) entity using it without paying for a license. For the £xx it would cost to submit the
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A decent lawyer will point out that the envelope could have been sealed later
You mean after it had been dated by the postal service during their handling of the envelope?
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Please, read the whole thread before commenting.
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Not really charging ISPs (Score:2)
This levy wouldn't actually make ISPs pay for this stuff; they'd either pass the cost onto the consumer indiscriminately, or work harder at filtering out pirate traffic. Choosing the former option when the latter would be possible would result in consumers deciding to choose other providers where possible, so there is significant incentive to filter pirate traffic.
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Except that choosing the later would also make people move to other providers that don't try so hard or who have known loopholes. Either way, whoever makes the first move is going to lose out.
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Choosing the former option when the latter would be possible would result in consumers deciding to choose other providers where possible, so there is significant incentive to filter pirate traffic.
False dichotomy, there are other solutions.
Here's one as an example: the BIG ISP provides connection to an end-user not as a "consumer" but in a "retail/business-to-business" mode - like. every "Internet wizard of the family" will act as "the tiny ISP network admin". The result? An explosion of tiny-ISP-es to track/collect the royalty from. Under this conditions, either:
a. the government puts lots of red-tape to who can become an ISP (to limit the ISP numbers and make the tracking manageable). If the peop
Perhaps while they're at it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Perhaps while they're at it (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Costs will be passed on to the consumer, ensuring that the companies themselves are not affected.
2) The incidence of infringement of the laws these levies are intended to cover will increase, as th general population feel they have paid for a service which they should now make use of, and the costs these levies are intended to cover will increase exponentially.
Best of luck to them. I say 12 months down the line, they're out of business as nobody is buying music anymore. Why buy it a second time when I've already bought it once with my levy payment?
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Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Naturally, the fees will be turned over to the artists whose works are copied and rather than considering the copiers thieves, they will be paid in full.
HA HA HA...I crack me up!
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GM? (Score:3, Interesting)
Difficult to implement (Score:4, Insightful)
A difficult law to implement. How are they going to know how much pirated content travels by one ISP's lines? Even the ISP itself has no idea. Are they going to suppose that all bittorrent traffic is pirated content? What is the percentage of pornographic content? I assume that they don't represent the pornographic content providers, specially foreign ones. What about encrypted content? If they implement such a law I assume that the level of encrypted content will rise. There is no reason why all pirated content is not encrypted, except that it's at the moment not needed.
In the end they probably just want to get a fixed levy an all ISPs. And all blank CDs, DVDs, hard disks, memory cards, diskettes, memo pads, pens, photo cameras, and people with good memory.
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"In the end they probably just want to get a fixed levy an all ISPs. And all blank CDs, DVDs, hard disks, memory cards, diskettes, memo pads, pens, photo cameras, and people with good memory"
thats how it work, here in spain.
these people have "hacked" the system (our social system) to get a profit withouth work.
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That's why some people in Spain buy all those products (except ISP) out of the country.
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This is equivalent to (Score:2, Insightful)
Passing a 'levy' on phone companies regarding number of calls used to facilitate illegal activities.
Whether a data transfer constitutes piracy or not is just a guess.
So even if you don't download, you're fined (Score:3, Interesting)
Might as well increase road tax if there are more people speeding.
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There is definitely road tax in MY country...
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Score:2)
AMAZING IDEA! (Score:3, Interesting)
Pay for Pirating Customers (Score:2)
Actually it's not that bad an idea.. (Score:2)
Assuming that fee is paid, and obviously I pay a portion of it on my broadband bill does that not mean that any material I download is in effect legal as I have licensed it with said fee.
So I can download Shrek 4 Bluray rip legally for a £2pm increase on my broadband bill.
I'd essentially get as much music / films etc as I want for a £2pm subscription
The trick of course is if X is the price of a retail copy and 4X is the fee per month then I logical need to download at least 5X worth of music etc
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:4, Insightful)
Why is it unbelievable? The artist has signed up to a deal where they have to do no additional work and still get royalties.
If you don't want the whole iTunes/retailer/distributor/label deal just do it yourself, no-one's stopping you.
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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
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I'd have to call BS on this. I don't for a second believe that the artist gets 5% or frankly anywhere near that. I believe the another article on slashdot within the last few days indicated that artists get 23 dollars out of every 1000 and that is for traditional cd's. As I understand it from other articles I have read, artists usually make far less on digital media than on traditional media. So if your going to claim that artists are receiving 5% of the gross price of a track from itunes your going
So, if they succeed with this... (Score:5, Interesting)
...then presumably, it will be legal for me to download their clients' work, as I will already be paying for it.
Do this (Score:5, Insightful)
I am for this and when this new law is introduced so will another one. Were EVERY single artist will be locked up for life for the countless drug offences they are bound to commit on average.
Every performer in England will serve life for Mick Jaggers drug abuse. That is fair isn't it? If I have to pay for someone else downloading, why don't they got to do time for someone elses snorting?
But I know the real reason behind this proposal. The lawyer introduced, hoping that the people will have wasted their bullets on the entertainers before they can get busy on the lawyers.
with logic like that, (Score:2)
Just doing their job (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, we all know this is a ridiculously unfair idea - and PRS has history of promoting ridiculously unfair ideas (e.g. taking a car mechanic to court because having the radio on in their premises constitutes a "public performance").
But, it's their job to push for a world that's skewed towards the people they represent. It's the rest of the world's job to push back.
The best reaction is to say "well, you would want that", then say no.
Re:Just doing their job (Score:4, Insightful)
Almost correct.
It may be their "job" to push for a world, skewed towards the people they represent.
In practice, they tend to end up pushing for a world skewed towards THEMSELVES.
The RIAA might claim to work for musicians. In actuality, they work for the RIAA first, for record-labels second, and for musicians a distant third.
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"well, you would want that", then say no
But the question is, if the UK people will actually be given any chance to say anything about this.
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...skewed towards the people they represent.
You mean the fat-cat label company execs?
It's simply not the ISP's business ... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's also just bare-faced cheek for the record companies, et al, to lobby for legislation that makes some other industry pay to shore up their failing business paradigm!
The ISP's should tell 'em to take a running jump!
If they do, I will download (Score:3, Insightful)
I do not download movies or music now, cause I think I should pay for it.
but.. if the forces ISP to pay, I will gladly download all movies and music there is.. cause then I have already paid for it.
So if the movie and record companies want to increase the download, then force ISP to pay up.
Will it cost more for more bandwidth? (Score:2)
There's only so much time in a day to listen to music. And most people play the same stuff over and over. More bandwidth doesn't mean they are getting more music; it only means a little less lag in the new music they get.
Clearly they are trying to position themselves to get rich way, way over proportion to the value they provide. Maybe they should just collect their fee from headphones and speakers. That would be in closer proportion to how much people gain from the music.
Alignment of interests (Score:2)
"...a piracy fee would better align the financial interests of internet service providers (ISPs) with rights holders..."
Of course, the correct alignment of interests is ISPs and their customers. The IP-holders don't pay the ISPs anything, so it's a mystery as to why should they expect any services or fees in return. They can't accept that, so why not get their government cronies to step in and "fix" things. Nice servers you have there, be a shame if anything happened to them...
Come again...? (Score:2)
Their argument appears to be that ISPs don't currently think they should pay for copyright infringement... so to prevent this being a problem ISPs should be made to pay for copyright infringement, at which point their objections will go away. Does that actually make sense in any way?
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Rupert Murdoch News Tax . . . (Score:2)
Coming soon. He's always yapping about how his content is being "stolen" and distributed on the Internet. So he can demand that ISPs be taxed for carrying his content, too.
Is there anyone else, who feels that ISPs are distributing their content, without them seeing a cent?
If this Music tax passes, the flood gates will be opened . . .
Irony incoming, in three... two... one... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Gee (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as such a massive percentage of what I might pay goes to the companies rather than the artists that create the work (composer, lyricist, performer) then I'll just stick with downloading.
Besides, I've already paid for most of my music twice already. Bought on vinyl or tape cassette and then replaced with CD. Why should I have to pay for it a third time to put it on my iphone ?
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I don't think anyone is averse to paying artists for their work except the fucking record companies.