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Canadian Songwriters Propose Collective Licensing
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Jan 28, 2008 05:29 PM
from the all-about-just-gettin-paid dept.
from the all-about-just-gettin-paid dept.
aboivin writes "The Songwriters association of Canada has put forward a proposition for collective licensing of music for personal use. The Right to Equitable Remuneration for Music File Sharing would legalize sharing of a copy of a copyrighted musical work without motive of financial gain, for a monthly fee of $5.00 applied to all Canadian internet connections, which would be distributed to creators and rights holders. From the proposal: 'File sharing is both a revolution in music distribution and a very positive phenomenon. The volunteer efforts of millions of music fans creates a much greater choice of repertoire for consumers while allowing songs — both new and old, well known and obscure — to be heard. All that's needed to fulfill this revolution in distribution is a way for Creators and rights holders to be paid.'"
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$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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Canadian Songwriters' Collective Licensing Bid Goes Voluntary 93 comments
Last year, the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) proposed a plan to legalize the file sharing of copyrighted songs, which involved a small monthly fee to people using an internet connection. Critics of the plan complained that it amounted to another tax, and the Canadian recording industry said it violated copyright law. Now, as an anonymous reader writes,
"The SAC has renewed its bid to legalize peer-to-peer file sharing in return for a levy on Internet service. The SAC is now calling for the plan to be voluntary, with both consumers and creators having the right to opt-out. ACTRA, the leading performer group in Canada, now says it is also supportive of a legalized approach with the prospect of extending the plan to video sharing."
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Great, another tax (Score:5, Insightful)
And they *say* they'll distribute the funds, but that hasn't seemed to work in the past. Why is this going to work now? Someone needs to realize this can't work in practice.
Re:Great, another tax (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that's democracy. If the majority wants free music sharing, then it gets to happen.
So in fact, the $5 is a savings when it comes to all Canadian taxes. That's what I mean by a small problem -- $5 for music -- solving a large problem -- many hundreds of dollars for law regulation, enforcement, and court fees; not to mention the resources of those court personnel and the delays towards court cases that actually matter -- not that we have many murders in this country.
A $60 annual tax is really nothing to complain about. And hey, being a part of the internet service, it gets written off as a business expense!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Still, it's a huge improvement over the existing situation. As long as we're not paying "per-use" or "per-song", we're still creating a situation where the common person on the street is subtly encouraged to expose themselves to as much culture and knowledge as their time, interest and curiosity allows without a financial disincentive and still supporting our artists. That's the most important thing
Re:Great, another tax (Score:5, Insightful)
Then we pay the movie writers $10/mo
Then we pay the book industry $10/mo
Then we pay the software industry $10/mo
Then adobe and microsoft step up and say they are so big and widley pirated they should each get their own special levies...$20/mo
Then we pay Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft [again] $10/mo for piracy of their console games
Then the songwriters notice they are only getting $5/mo and demand a raise to $10/mo like everyone else
Then bloggers find out when people read their blogs they are actually downloading a copy and demand their cut... $10/mo
Then photographers demand their fee for all the images that get downloaded
Then supermodels and celebrities discover that people are trading naked pictures of them without a model release and demand their fee, separate from the photographers... $10/mo
Then myspace users who are having their 'private pictures' redistributed...
"A $60 annual tax is really nothing to complain about."
How about $1200+ ??
Parent
Re:Great, another tax (Score:4, Funny)
Then they passed a tax to pay the movie writers. Again I said nothing, because I don't go to the movies.
Then they passed a tax to pay the book industry. I said nothing, because I don't read.
Then they passed a tax to pay the software industry. I said nothing, because I don't own a computer.
Then they passed a tax to pay me
Parent
Re:Great, another tax (Score:4, Insightful)
I have no doubt the same would happen to this flat monthly tax. This year it's $5. Next year it's $6. In 2009 it'll suddenly jump to $10. And the RIAA would still be complaining.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There are a lot of catches, though. For example, the GEMA is not free of scumbaggery. For example, it distinguishes between "serious musi
Re:Great, another tax (Score:5, Insightful)
In my eyes it is anything but common sense but is merely the rule of man, substituted for the rule of law.
Why should the innocent be forced to pay for the illegal acts of others? Many of these people broke no law, yet they are being penalized for others' lawlessness. The guilty and the innocent are both treated equally. By any reasonable definition, this is surely injustice.
One of the reasons people moved to the New World was to establish a system of laws where every person was responsible for their actions, but not that of his brother or sister (e.g. debtor prisons). How then can you justly explain to your neighbor that he must pay for your illegal acts, without calling it legalized theft?
Surely $5 sounds like a trivial matter, hardly worth even debating, but what happens to the cries of all the others who claim they are wronged by thievery of all kinds on the Internet? Can you say yes to the music industry but no to movie studios, books, newspapers, TV, and the host of others sure to claim their victim status? Will you pay all of these groups, and ask your neighbor on dial-up to help? This is justice perverted and the police powers of the state made corrupt.
Is the rule of law not debased when it allows and even requires injustice to be institutionalized?
I guess we all get the kind government we deserve.
If this is the case, then I hope we are never worthy of such institutions.
Parent
NO (Score:2)
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Who Gets Left Out? (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem #2: Whoever collects the money has an automatic monopoly. No competition means the monopoly can take a bigger cut of the profits.
Problem #3: This creates a problem for new or up-and-coming groups. They often get their exposure by offering their music, or samples of it, for free. Fewer people will hear them when the cost is the same as more established groups.
A time honored tradition... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who divides the loot? (Score:2)
Too much money, not enough transparency. (Score:4, Insightful)
The general idea is great, but implementation details matter. I doubt the average Canadian house spends $60/year on music, so the $5/month is excessive. The other thing that caught my eye was this:
Who are these mysterious people waiting in the wings that have been spying on everyone? Media Sentry? The same clowns who would tell you that 98% of all online music is "theft"? Most artists should say, loud and clear, "no thanks" unless they can trust the monitoring company to honestly report listening. The industry has that has so long given artists the shaft should be discarded. Everyone else should say, "no thanks" to having all of their internet traffic monitored.
The obvious choice between earning a living by song and dance and personal entertainment or liberty is liberty. Today they want to listen, tomorrow they will censor. The trade off is not worth while.
Using the government to collect money (Score:2)
Have enough social fees on my utility bills already.
It is so totally stupid that this is even been contemplated. The best part, it likely will not get past the government, they don't like competition.
Yes, I'd like that too... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's hard to see this as anything but a blatant money-grab. Lots of us use Internet connections for reasons completely unrelated to music; why should we be forced to pay for that? What next, another $5 for the Canadian version of the MPAA, plus $2 for TV shows? Then $5 for the BSA? Another $5 for copyrighted books, and another $5 for comic books?
Everyone has to pay??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why should Grandma pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Say Grandma has an internet connection, and uses it only for sending email. She lives on a fixed income. Why should she pay $5 a month to subsidize other people so they can get free music by violating copyright? For someone on a fixed income, another $5/mo bill is a significant hit. Maybe that's $5 she could have spent having lunch with her bridge club at IHOP.
Basically the problem is that copyright is unenforceable, and a majority of the population feels no moral compunctions about violating it. (I happen to disagree with the majority, but that battle is lost, and it's time to move on.) How exactly does it follow from these circumstances that every single member of the population should be forced to pay a subsidy?
Realistically, the music industry is going to have to shrink. Boo hoo. There's no law of nature that dictates that x% of GDP should be spent on recorded music. A hundred years ago, nobody had recorded music, and the only way you got to hear any was either (a) by making music yourself, or (b) going out to hear a band. Then there was a long period where the default way to get music was to listen to commercially produced recordings, you didn't get much choice because the distribution channels (radio and LPs) couldn't cater to the long tails, and the record companies made out like robber barons. Now we're entering a new period, where the record companies have no legitimate function, and the distribution channels can cater to the long tails. It's just a change that's dictated by technology. The good news is that even if the industry shrinks, cutting out the middleman could actually increase remuneration to artists. We don't need a tax to make that happen.
Why only music? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a copyright holder to be, I'm all for it (Score:4, Insightful)
SOCAN Sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the fuck should I have my internet bill go up $5 a month!? I'm not downloading that much, my parents aren't either. Very few people are, why should the rest of us pay? Anyway, 90% of the music I download is not covered by SOCAN in the first place, how do those artists get their money?
This is a stupid idea. Music is now, for all intents and purposes, free. I'm cool with that, and I've made a living of music for years. WHAT THE FUCK DID SOCAN EVER DO FOR ME BUT PAY FOR LOBBYISTS?
Most Artists *won't* get their money (Score:3, Interesting)
This is quite possibly the most important question about the whole scheme, because the answer is that most of the artists won't, and that ruins the entire justification for it in the first place, before you even consider the other problems with the setup.
I've seen how this plays out with other collection rackets like ASCAP, and it's very clear that especially as you move down the long tail, a
Community networks (Score:3, Interesting)
reality (Score:4, Insightful)
hey artists: you'll get paid for concerts and advertising, nothing else. get used to it
that's the reality we are becoming
don't like it? who cares. that's what is happening anyway. go ahead and make a bunch of laws counteracting this trend. i hereby pass a law saying the sun will move in the opposite direction. same impact on reality
end of story
Somewhat old news (Score:5, Informative)
- Michael Geist
Greedy pigs want to set an ugly precedent (Score:4, Insightful)
Secondly, this sets a very ugly precedent, if allowed to pass. Musical rights are like construction unions, there's a gazillion of them. The Songwriters and Recording artists are only two of them. There are also performance rights and reproduction rights and who knows what else. By the time they all get their pound of flesh, my $29.95 ADSL account will have a $15/month tax on it.
But wait, it gets better, or should I say, worse. I'm sure the movie industry will want its $15/month, as will the TV industry. and e-book publishers, and software publishers. So now we're looking at a $75/month tax on my $29.95/month ADSL account.
This money-grab must be stopped now.
What is an internet connection? (Score:5, Insightful)
What if I have two internet connections for my house - one for business and one for work. And two cell phones. Oh, and a wifi connection for when I'm at the airport. That $25/month from what I can see.
This'll never happen just because of the rules involved.
Socialized music (Score:3, Insightful)
Now it's not unheard of for Canada to socialize media -- see the National Film Board, for instance -- but this seems rather extreme.
I might go for this if there is an opt out (Score:4, Interesting)
I might go for this, but the implementation would be tricky. What I have in mind is the following.
1) Do not tack this directly onto the internet bill without consent of the user.
2) Should be $3.00 or lower, scaled to the quantity of songs downloaded
3) Should take the form of a hook (like an encryption key) that identifies the user of a file sharing app has having a legitimate license.
4) The key should be able to confirm that the license is legit and up to date, and nothing else (no way to trace a key to a particular user).
END COMMUNICATION
Re:$5 Canadian?? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:$5 Canadian?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:$5 Canadian?? (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with the proposal with one caveat: it shouldn't be applied to *all* internet connections. Just the so-called "high speed" ones. Anything 1mbit and over. Anything under that isn't fast enough to make filesharing worthwhile. More importantly, you can get a "high speed" connection in Canada that's 128kbit or 256kbit. For surfing the Internet or checking your e-mail, it's plenty fast enough. Even a 1mbit connection, which is one step above the entry level, is plenty fast enough for surfing and e-mail, and a lot of people will choose these slower services because they are priced much lower than an actual high speed connection.
We shouldn't be applying a levy of $5/month to a dialup Internet account that, itself, only costs $2.95/month, especially when the purpose of that levy is to combat a practice on the Internet that the $3/month connection simply isn't capable of. I'd happily pay an extra $5/month on my 7mbit cable connection, however, if it got rid of the legal grey areas surroudning file sharing. (how it's legal for me to download, sorta, but illegal for me to upload, for example)
Parent
Re:$5 Canadian?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:$5 Canadian?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahh. You begin to understand the meaning of "socialism". By spreading the cost out among everybody, rather than just the people who use the service, you can reduce the overall cost for everybody. Kind of like how our medical system works: I'm 26 years old, and I had knee surgery in November of 2007. Before then, I'd never been in the hospital, but I'm still paying for the public health care as part of my taxes. Because I'd paid that health care in my taxes, however, my stay in the hospital for the knee surgery (ACL, Meniscus, and shaving a fracture on the underside of the patella that never healed properly) was completely free. Didn't cost me a dime. Nor did the painkillers I got (and never used after the day of the surgery).
It doesn't matter that you aren't using that functionality. By charging you a small amount of money, it reduces the overall cost for everybody else.
You do realise that Canada isn't a capitalist state, right?
Besides which, they may choose to implement it only on residential services. *shrugs* If you have a "residential" account and are using it for "business" purposes, one has to ask the question: why aren't you using a "business" account? I'm in that boat, too, btw. I have a DSL connection and a cable connection. I do all my hosting off the DSL connection, and my personal uses off the Cable connection. I still think it's a good idea.
Parent
Re:$5 Canadian?? (Score:5, Insightful)
$5/month is a bargain for those who enjoy getting new music at the rate of a CD every 2 months. When I was in my 20's, I would have agreed. Today, that's a rate almost 10 times greater than what I've spent on music over the last two years.
$5/month is a great deal for music, and maybe $10/month is good for movies, $30/month should be good for TV on demand compared to cable, and then there's video games, software, radio, subscription news, audiobooks, etc.; all of which might be digitally copied.
You can make a good argument for socialism on necessities like health care, education, road maintenance, etc., etc., but it makes a lot less sense when applied to luxuries. To categorize and treat them in the same way is a mistake.
Parent
Canada:capitalist country, socialized healthcare (Score:3, Insightful)
If your country has relatively free markets, recognition of private property and a state that mostly stays out of public ownership of enterprises then, in broad terms, it is a capitalistic one (spare me any detail about what I may have missed, I may not know exactly what a capitalist country is but I sure as hell can recognize one when I see it).
A country spousing the principles of capitalism can and
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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We actually tried this during PSHCE classes (Sorry, no sources to cite here!) and gave people realistic incomes and tax r
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I've got one better for you ... charge the internet accounts that are actually trading files, leave the rest of us the hell alone. Hell, if you want, let people sign up for it.
... keep your han
As someone who has never downloaded a song off the internet, and who buys all of my CDs
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If I'm not doing anything illegal, why would I pay an extortion fee on my internet connection which presumes that I am?
How do I know that the artists I listen to get paid from this? They're not Canadian, and they're not mainstream. So, whatever statistic they come up with isn't going to pay the people whose music I listen to.
I buy CDs because I like music; I love music in fact. I like to have the
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And I'd sure love to find a decent plan for 2.95 a month. I pay 24.95 a month (plus GST) in a province where the radio is advertising lo-hi-speed (128 kb?) connections for $14.95.
Oh well they figure fiber should be here inside of 20 years.
Re:$5 Canadian?? (Score:4, Insightful)
It should not be applied at all, it's similar to the CD and DVD levy that assumes everyone is a crook.
It's an interesting concept but it's not right to generalize that you know for sure that everyone (100%) of people are and always will download music off of the Internet. Having a high speed Internet connection doesn't make you a criminal.
I don't know of any other situation where all people using a service are accused of criminal activity. It would be like everyone with a telephone had to pay a fine because telephones are sometimes used for criminal purposes.
Parent
Re:$5 Canadian?? (Score:5, Funny)
Remember all that news about the U.S. dollar falling in the global market and all those morons were talking about it? Yeah, well, it actually turns out to have an impact in you making fun of how poor Canada is.
Parent
Re:$5 Canadian?? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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So bottom line -- why should every prospective purchaser of internet service be automatically required to purchase a "legal file sharing" license as well?
If you can work out the logistics of making it an optional line item (and if you don't opt-in, the legal status of any sharing activity on your connection would be the same as i
Re:Interesting concept (Score:4, Insightful)
With file sharing music can be something "which all enjoy in common in the sense that each individual's consumption of such a good leads to no subtractions from any other individual's consumption of that good...:". In other words, a public good as defined here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good [wikipedia.org]
You can upload as many copies as you like and you'll still have full enjoyment of your music.
The government (i.e. all of us) already funds public libraries because its a lot cheaper (i.e. much more efficient) than everyone buying their own personal copy of a book. Public libraries are efficiency promoting institutions. This proposal is not that much different.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess I should go visit the Stalinist tyrannies of Canada, Australia and Sweden before my beliefs make the gulag inevitable.
You sound just like that mad dude out of Bioshock BTW.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
1) This approach would eliminate the more creative appro