Warner Music Pushing Music Tax For Universities 375
An anonymous reader writes "Warner Music is pitching the idea of a 'music tax' for various top universities. The idea is that students would be free to file share, but the university needs to monitor and track everything, create a pool of money, hand it over to a recording industry entity that promises to distribute the proceeds fairly. In exchange, the university gets a 'covenant not to sue' from the music labels. It's not a full license, just a basic promise that they won't sue. It's also claimed that this is 'voluntary' but the Warner Music guy says that they need to include all universities and all ISPs to really make it work. It's basically a music tax, where the recording industry gets to sit back and collect money."
Music tax? (Score:5, Informative)
We need to stop taking them at their word when they say their going to give money to artists. They generally don't (unless the artist had a good lawyer, I suppose.) Actually, we need to stop taking them at their word.
great timing! (Score:5, Informative)
Now that the cost of higher education is falling [nytimes.com] and endowments are growing [boston.com], universities will have lots of money to spend on music taxes!
Alternatively, they could just give every student a free copy of PeerGuardian.
Re:Indie (Score:5, Informative)
Your argument doesn't make sense...
Note that I don't think that the RIAA's proposal here makes sense.. no more than do the levies on CDs and DVDs (and tapes, etc) in most European countries and I believe in Canada.. at least; both assume that you will be making copies of music/video that they hold the copyright 'policing' rights to -onto- those media. If you don't.. you only put, say, your own photos onto them.. tough luck, you're still paying the levy. You can get exemption, but.. you guessed it.. to get exemption status you need to pay a yearly fee. Ho-hum.
But back to your argument, and it ties into something I said above... the RIAA looks after the copyrights and whatnot (yeah, I know, they look after their own wallet, blabla) of -their- members. If you are an indie artist, they don't much care about you (other than your diluting the market and such) or rather your copyrights.. as you are not a member.
So if you have a problem with students (potentially) copying your works... hey, that's great... but it's not the RIAA's task to deal with it.. it is your own.. or whoever you signed with (unless you're truly indie and just do your own pressing/burning, distribution, etc.).. it falls onto you/them to have a similar 'I won't sue you' agreement with the university/ties in question.
So yes.. it will never happen.. but the biggest reason why that wouldn't happen is because you are independent artist and simply don't deserve - technically, legally, etc. - any slice of such an agreement.
Just to make this absolutely clear.. I don't think the RIAA deserves any slice of.. well.. whatever - a university's budget, I suppose - for hypothetical / assumed copyright infringing activities where copyrights they govern come into play. I firmly believe they should have to prove it.. of course the laws, regulations and technical aspects make it very difficult to prove who violated what copyright, while at the same time it's clear copyright violation -does- occur.. so if the RIAA wants to get this sort of agreement in action and a university agrees to it... then so be it. I'd frown upon the university but if they figure it's less of hassle / moneysink than is battling RIAA lawyers all the time, then I can't blame them for being pragmatic at least until the laws are more firmly on their side (which is slowly happening, so I wouldn't sign such an agreement just yet).
Re:They can kiss my ass (Score:5, Informative)
wrong. there aren't any goods being stolen or traded. bits are not goods, they are a copy of other bits, which means they are infringing on a copyright. that is a civil matter not criminal. so unless you really believe government money,your tax money, should be spent fighting someone elses private court battles you are serioulsy misunderstanding the situtation.
CD levy (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, indies can be included (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, they specifically said indie artists and labels could sign-on for this and get paid.
Re:Indie (Score:5, Informative)
Sort of.
There was a white paper [eff.org] put out suggesting a superficially similar scheme. Unsurprisingly, the key word the RIAA have missed from the EFF proposal is "voluntary", which makes their claim that their tax is EFF supported highly misleading.
The EFF have published a clarification titled Collective Licensing Good, ISP Tax Bad [eff.org] in case anyone is still uncertain.
Re:great timing! (Score:5, Informative)
Check his links. The one linked from "growing" has the title "Harvard's Endowment Plunges 8 Billion." I think you've just restated his point.
The Canadian levy is a joke (Score:4, Informative)
They're already getting a chunk of change from blank disc sales
That's what burns me every time I buy a spindle of discs for burning my home movies to DVD and data backups. I used to think it was OK until I read how much the Canadian Private Copying Collective wants to hike the rates. [cpcc.ca] They want the rates to be 29 cents per CD-R, $50 per iPod with less than 10 GB memory and $10 for any SD card with more than 4GB memory, just to pull a few.
I just sent them an e-mail telling them to go fuck themselves (well a bit more polite than that.)
That money is supposed to go to SOCAN which distributes the money among artists [socan.ca] but this bloated waste of office space (300 employees) requires over $34 million per year just to operate. They paid out over $180 million last year, probably most to the CBC.
If you treat customers like potential criminals, then that's what they will become. I used to go out of my way to buy the TV shows I watch and music I listen to. But if I'm paying levies on my blank media and to my college or my ISP punishing me for copies I'll never make, or based on the assumption that I'm going to torrent their shit, maybe I'll just do that then.
Re:CD levy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Indie (Score:2, Informative)
From me, they get nothing.
Re:Indie (Score:5, Informative)
the sad thing is, this sort of music tax is already in effect. BMI [wikipedia.org] and ASCAP [wikipedia.org] already collect royalties from any public venue that has a jukebox or plays CDs/radio over a PA system. basically, if you operate a bar or club you have to pay them a yearly licensing fee, regardless of what kind of music you play or don't play. they have their own auditors that they send out regularly to check up on venues and operate in a similar fashion to the IRS.
even if you play international music that is in the public domain, or music by indie artists that aren't members of their organization (meaning don't pay them a membership fee and thus don't receive their royalties), you still have to pay them. unfortunately, this system removes any incentive a venue owner might have to play music by indie musicians who actually want their music played in public for as many people to hear as possible. i don't know what gives them the right to collect royalties on music they don't hold the rights to (or have the copyright holder's permission to collect royalties on), but most bar/club owners just pay the licensing fee to avoid legal repercussions.
Re:Indie (Score:1, Informative)
Clearly you failed at reading the bit where I wrote that "American spends something like $50/yr on copies of movies/music" (emphasis mine).
Oh calm down. I was clearly talking about the idea of a tax in general as it would apply to any country and I'd never suggest imposing it on other countries against their will, and infact I never did.
It is however good to quantify what kind of money we're talking about here to support the existing (failed) model. Talking about $50/yr puts some metrics so that we can discuss how we can support artists, preferably through voluntary schemes.
The most I said is that I'm "generally in support" of this if it means we get to use our internet connections for media.
Wow, you're just plain obnoxious.
Re:Indie (Score:3, Informative)
Not only do they have to ask them for the money, they also have to pay yearly fees in order to get any. Not exceedingly small fees either.
Re:They can kiss my ass (Score:3, Informative)
bits are not goods
Wrong.
which means they are infringing on a copyright.
And this is why. Wikipedia has a pretty good definition [wikipedia.org] of what a "good" is:
A good in economics is any object, service or right that increases utility, directly or indirectly.
Information that is copyrightable is a vague category that can as desired slide into "object", "service", or "right" depending on point of view. It however remains a good no matter how you view it, which is the way it should be, I think.