Can’t-fail scheme to monetise music
p2pnet view Music | P2P:- “A government sponsored protection racket? Is that what Eddie Schwartz (right) is seriously proposing? Good luck with that, lol. :-p”
That’s a p2pnet Reader’s Write in response to a suggestion by Schwartz, president of the Songwriters Association of Canada, who thinks it’d be a great idea for Canadians to have a monthly tax (he calls it a ‘license’) of $10 tacked onto their ISP bills.
Not that the idea is anything new. It’s been proposed before in various formats, one of the principal objections to it (apart from the obvious) being: why should people who aren’t interested in music downloads subsidise those who are?
The $10 a month “license” would mean “holders” could download as much music as they wanted “without fear of legal reprisal”.
But Duh — as p2pnet pointed out on Saturday, Canadians can do that already, as long as their downloads are for personal use only.
According to the Montreal Gazette, Schwartz even claims he’s “already approached several Internet service providers — the private firms that would collect the fees on behalf of copyright collectives — and hopes to begin trial runs of the licences by the end of the year”.
Oh rilly?
But, says the p2pnet reader, how about this? >>>
Instead of forcing a $10 fee on all internet users via ISP’s, including users who don’t download at all (which obviously isn’t fair), why not instead create a web page where people have the OPTION of signing up for ‘protection’?
All the different copyright based industries can do this, with the average joe getting to choose which ones they’re willing to pay for based on their own internet usage. This is really the only options that is fair to everyone.
Those that don’t pay will be fair game for law enforcement should they be caught, while those that pay will be protected. Best of all, the various industries get to FAIRLY monetize something that they weren’t previously.
Start at a price most folks would be willing to hand their credit card details over for, then once everyone has become accustomed to how great it is to download without worries, jack the price up on them.
Everybody wins and nobody wins all at the same time, exactly the way the universe likes to see things run. 
PS: Don’t wait too long to jump on this idea. As I’m sure you’re aware, your time is limited. You do not have forever to come up with a solution to the so called “piracy” problem. Unless, of course, you’re lying about your particular industry being in its death throes.
Personally I feel that if you keep trying to greedily force all the people of the world to jump onto your bandwagon, as you’ve repeatedly attempted up until now, you will fail miserably just as you always have. Remember, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result.
If and when you fall, it will have been greed, not piracy, that bought about your demise, something I have no doubt the history books of the distant future will say on the matter.
“Have fun thinking on that while you ponder how to get ISP’s and the government to back another of your silly scatterbrained ideas”, adds the reader.
p2pnet – Songwriters want $10 a month from music fans, March 5, 2011
Montreal Gazette – Canadian songwriters propose $10 fee for music-sharing, March 4, 2011
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian & military participation ~ Marshall McLuhan
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March 7th, 2011 at 8:45 am
There isn’t really that much wrong with this. I’m sure a lot of people would be ready to pay a certain amount for a “all you can hear” music download flat-rate.
Just that it shouldn’t be imposed on all Internet-users. That would make it a “music industry subsidy tax”. But on a opt-in basis, I would consider it.
A~O
March 7th, 2011 at 10:10 am
Exactly. A monthly subscription fee should only be charged to those who are interested in receiving the service, just like a cable subscription.
March 7th, 2011 at 10:13 am
I disagree. That would legitimize a witch hunt for those who didn’t pay the extortion fee.
March 7th, 2011 at 1:58 pm
Posting by Anton Onszers and the following Reader’s Write post has been generated by the RIAA using HB Gary persona generation software.
This is not a real post. Please ignore.
March 7th, 2011 at 2:00 pm
10$ per month to feed these parasites destoying our society?
NO WAY!
They can kiss my ass. I will rather cancel my internet!
March 7th, 2011 at 4:23 pm
The thing with any of these kinds of “levy” schemes that people just won’t seem to wrap their heads around, is that, in order anyone to determine what you “consume”, you’ll need to be monitored up the yinyang. And, if the implications of monitoring, on their own, aren’t bad enough, you also have to expect some other “changes” to the existing landscape.
“Naturally”, the ISPs will be the “preferred choice” by all the “industries” to perform both the monitoring and the collection of the extra fees, as the providers not only run the pipes that would need to be monitored, but they already have a billing mechanism to add the levy money to.
But, we all know the big incentive to have our providers do this is not “efficiency of process”.
It has more to do with the fact that the content industries would like to see all this happen ON EVERYONE ELSE’S DIME, as they’ve already proven to us. The content industries seem to think that we, along with our providers, actually OWE this kind of thing to them! (Since we’ve all contributed so much to the “obvious devastation” of their business models.)
We also know the ISPs haven’t been very receptive to such plans, and why should they be?! Afterall, they’re being told everyone that holds some kind of “intellectual property rights” wants them to:
1) monitor all the traffic for their “property”
2) determine who should be charged these “fees”, and what that charge should be
3) collect this charge, effectively raising their customers’ internet bills
4) add more complex tasks to their billing systems
5) make themselves liable for for any “shortcomings” in the collection process (IP holders will, of course, want this money “guaranteed” to them)
6) absorb all the labour costs of these processes
Since ISPs won’t have any of this, we would likely end up with some sort of “forced comprimise”, such as the content industries wanting to place some of THEIR people inside the walls of our providers, thereby gaining access to a wealth of stuff they have absolutely no business being anywhere near. You’d also have to get ready to have police being handed open access to your providers’ connections as well. It doesn’t take too much thought to see how very fucked up this scenario would be.
And, don’t forget, the content industries aren’t saying they will accept EVERYTHING WE DO in exchange for a levy/license/tax/ whatever. They actually want to have their cake, eat it, and then wash it down with our milk. They’ll want control of who offers the downloads, while still being able to sue the uploaders! Remember “uploading” will still be viewed as “illegal distribution”, and protocols like BitTorrent will “automatically” be “breaking the new agreement”.
There’s so much more to this you can add yourself, just by applying a tiny bit of thought, but I’ll cut the prophetizing at this point. People need to just think about the implications of such things before blindly accepting them.
March 7th, 2011 at 5:01 pm
@ DA:
Exactly.
Cheers!
March 8th, 2011 at 12:38 am
How’s this for an idea?
These old-fashioned content industry goons can fuuck off and die. They can get a job at walmart or starve to death in the gutter, just like everyone else.
No $10 a month, no persecuting people for sharing information, and no more guilt trips about how music won’t exist unless the record companies make massive profits.
THIS IS THE NEW REALITY. WE WILL FREELY SHARE ALL FORMS OF INFORMATION. YOU CAN NOT STOP US. WE ARE SMARTER THAN YOU. ACCEPT IT AND ADAPT, OR GET A JOB IN FAST FOOD.
If they bring sue-em-all to this country, I can personally GUARANTEE that a significant technological advance in P2P will be revealed that will provide total anonymity for everyone. P2P is still in it’s infancy, and it WILL be anonymized. Then what are they going to do? Who will they sue, and with what proof? ISP DPI isn’t going to help, it is already useless for content identification purposes against even weak-azz bittorrent DH+RC4 message stream encryption.
The bottom line, Eddie Shitz, is WE WIN, YOU LOSE. Stop embarrassing yourself with stupid ideas.
March 8th, 2011 at 3:05 am
Let’s look at the numbers: http://www.internetworldstats.com/am/ca.htm
about 25,000,000 people have net now, @ 10 $ a pop that’s 250,000,000 $
so they want to steal 250 Million from Canadians besides getting paid by industry already?
Now how much of this will Songwriters get? If Artists are any indication then it’s next to nil [zero] as corporations steal most of it.
Smell the rotten deal yet?
March 8th, 2011 at 4:15 am
I’m glad to see this topic generated a number of worthy comments. My thinking at the time of my original post was along the lines of what a lot of ISP’s are doing already with their “cable” content. Present the customer with a list of packages and let them choose which they wish to subscribe to. If it works for one type of content delivery system, why not another? As always the best price will be the one that bundles it all, TV, movies, music, internet, AND freedom from worry of prosecution. Its already illegal to tap into any of the services currently available to us and we all accept that, so why should subscribing for what we download scare us so?
While the entertainment industry would probably love this concept (a new source of income while retaining the right to sue), I doubt the ISP’s would go for it. Most of them are already trying to rope as many consumers as possible into contracts, all in an effort to force people to consume everything from them, thus maximizing their profits in the process. They aren’t going to want to share any of that with anyone. Some say it is about money, some say control. I say wave enough cash under anyone nose and you can make them say or do whatever you want. Even the gatekeepers have their price.
Please don’t take me the wrong way. While I love the idea of being able to download anything I want, any time I want (which I already do, a pirate born and bred), I also can’t help but imagine how nice it would be to do all these activities without worrying whether my door is about to be broken down by law enforcement simply because I want to watch my favorite TV show or movie in a higher quality format than what my cable provider affords, and more conveniently. Ever since I moved and began bundling everything with one single provider, I haven’t been able to change my IP address like I used to (new equipment). I also encrypt EVERYTHING. It would be nice to be able to step out of the shadow of paranoia, if only for a little while, until the next big struggle comes along at least. As the movie quote goes, “I’d buy that for a dollar!”.