If you pirate music, you're downloading communism!

[Gordon Hundley]

On Mar 27, 2009, at 12:22 PM, M Holmes wrote:

> Yup, that's how I think it will go, with ISP's being charged something
> like a Dollar per week per user to put funds into the pot. No doubt
> there will somewhere be someone who never reads a book, listens to a
> track, watches a movie or plays a game online and will whine that they
> shouldn't have to pay, but they'll be ignored. For the rest of us, in
> principle we'll be able to see any movie/track/game/book ever created
> and I do think that will be an amazing thing.

I'm not sure that I like the idea of levying taxes on the use of the  
Internet in order to pay for music. You might think that most people  
who use the Internet download music, but that's probably just a  
reflection of the people you know who use the Internet. The greatest  
resistance to broadband adoption in the US is not access but cost. A  
lot of people simply don't see the value in broadband and yet use the  
Internet daily via dial-up to access email. These people would be  
greatly disadvantaged by being forced into paying for your music  
downloads, not least because for many of them financial constraints  
are what caused them to evaluate their Internet access needs and  
settle on dial-up. You actually risk pushing poorer people off the  
Internet if you put such a tax in place. That might work for affluent  
champions of libertarianism but I would suggest that it isn't  
beneficial to our countries' positions in the global markets.

If you tax use of the Internet for music, I can guarantee that you  
will follow that within a year with taxing the Internet for films,  
taxing the Internet for broadcast television, taxing the Internet for  
book publishing, taxing the Internet for radio. Before you know it,  
even the narcissistic blog authors are being paid for your ability to  
read or copy their blog.

It's not a good solution. A slightly better solution would be to  
create a subscription model and allow people to purchase such a  
subscription. It makes it easier for somebody to be dishonest (have  
access to copyright material without subscribing) but like any other  
license fee it can be enforced and the naughty can be punished. I  
think that kind of service is more or less here already.

But even that stinks if it fails to compensate artists based on how  
often their music is accessed. I would rather give money to musicians  
that I like rather than divvy it up among all musicians regardless of  
how much I enjoy their music or how talented they are. If you are a  
Hawkwind or BOC fan and pay for a subscription service that fails to  
account for per-download consumption, a larger portion of your money  
is going to bands you despise rather than bands you enjoy. Is that a  
good solution?

At the moment, most of the pieces of a workable solution are there,  
but the continued existence of the old record companies is causing a  
distraction. As usual, the indies are getting the job done first and  
its quite likely that what is left of the "major labels" will come  
knocking at the door of the indie-fueled new media moguls to sell  
their catalogues in the future. Happily, they are going to be the big  
losers in this media publishing realignment, although while the power  
grab is being fought, its going to continue to be rough for consumers  
(and especially) artists.

In other words, I think it will sort itself out ("market forces will  
prevail" to quote a certain haggard robot) without the need for new  
laws and new taxes that impede the growth of the Internet among the  
societally disadvantaged. But building an Internet industry body that  
removes peering to networks that undermine copyright would be a good  
step forward in dealing with sites that enable mass copyright  
infringement such as Pirate Bay.

Gordon