Why a Music Tax Is a Bad Idea 194
An anonymous reader writes with a followup to the story posted last week about Warner Music's plan for a music tax for universities. "There's been some debate about this plan and Techdirt has a detailed explanation of why a music tax is a bad idea, noting that it effectively rewards those who failed in the marketplace, punishes those who innovated and sets up a huge, inefficient and unnecessary bureaucracy. Meanwhile, plenty of musicians who are experimenting with new business models are finding that they can make more money and appeal to more fans. So, why stymie that process with a new bureaucracy that simply funds the big record labels?"
why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Profit???
At the very least campaign contributions?
Re:why? (Score:5, Insightful)
It Depends On Your POV (Score:5, Insightful)
So, why stymie that process with a new bureaucracy that simply funds the big record labels?
I think you've answered your own question. Warner Music isn't proposing this for your benefit.
Re:Call it what it is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention... (Score:5, Insightful)
It taxes (more like fines) those who did nothing wrong.
More reasons why it's a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course not. All of a sudden, how to download music will be on the news. People will make lots of money helping the technology-illiterate use file sharing. Everyone will file share music, because they're being taxed for it anyway. Music file sharing will go through the roof, and profits will drop lower than they knew was possible. That's when the tax will start going up.
Second Issue. All you file sharers out there: how often do you download a whole discography, when you only really want 5 songs tops? Exactly. That whole discography is going to count towards that artist's share of the tax. People do a lot of things out of laziness when it's free.
Third issue. Do you think it will stop at a music tax? Next the MPAA will be clamoring for a movie tax, and there'll be moves for a different fee for everything in existence: a video game tax, a tv show tax, a pornography tax, a sewing kit tax, etc. Once you open that box, it's not going to close again.
Music Tax is the foot in the door (Score:5, Insightful)
They'll do it because they think they can (Score:5, Insightful)
Warner is proceeding under the assumption that if they apply their big guns to this, they will get it pushed through. Especially for those colleges that would rather roll over and pass the bill to the students than fight for their rights. If I were a big music exec, I'd be doing the same thing. It's free money, even if only a handful of schools agree.
What burns me about it is that it's obviously a money grab, and it's so blatantly immoral it kills me that it's reached this level of attention. First off, why Warner? Why do they get the money? Second off, I'm a musician on the side, and I put out albums on a regular basis which make money here on a local level. If my band's album is downloaded on a college campus, is some of that tax going to go to me, if I have no affiliation with Warner? NO! So not only are they getting money for music that may or may not even be downloaded, they're getting money for content that isn't even theirs to profit on.
It's my opinion that the music industry has an standing policy of "do everything you think you can get away with", which, when combined with the more venerated "better to ask for forgiveness than permission" puts them in the frame of mind to do this. And if they get away with it, even a little bit, they're making money. For those lamenting that these guys are clinging to a dying business model, wake up and look around. This is the new business model! Use your clout and presence to try and get as much free money as you can, while doing damage control on the other side to stem any repercussions from less than moral practices. If you had millions of dollars to throw into a system like this to "prime the pump" so to speak, and you valued a quick buck over scruples, why the hell wouldn't you try to pull something like this? /soapbox
silly question (Score:3, Insightful)
So, why stymie that process with a new bureaucracy that simply funds the big record labels?
Because the record labels donate more money to policy makers than you do.
Money for a failing industry (Score:2, Insightful)
There is also the whole "how much does the artist get anyway?"
The internet brings up so much that wasn't around with books- (which was probably the original model music industry was based on) and it seems the question of libraries, fair use, and copyright definitions have been trampled on in so many ways.
Artists are disgruntled with contracts, people are disgruntled with costs, and the business is disgruntled with selling losses.
But, there is no reason for a lax to be leved based on a unpredicted media distrubution system. Buisnesses need to adapt, learn and create to survive. And, instead of learning how to deal with what listeners want today: signle songs, low cost, instant availability... they've attacked their consumer base, and are forcing them to pay.
All in all, there is no reason to support this industry. It needs to be revamped into a new successful business model, that takes into account its listening base, and doesn't disrespect, sue and tax them when they are not paying attention.
Re:why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Tax vs. Blanket License (Score:2, Insightful)
So the music industry is trying to sell a blanket license, so that it can monetize its assets without suing customers. Isn't this a step in the right direction? Calling it a tax instead of a blanket license is just inflammatory, IMHO. Some of these companies were built in good faith, relying on property rights as they currently exist, they paid money to own licenses which gave them the right to make profits. That doesn't guarantee profits, of course, but if they paid someone to 'own' the music, what's ethically wrong with pursuing those profits?
Don't get me wrong, I disagree with many of the fundamental ideas on which the industry relies. I think it's bad business to sue their customers, but the original mistake that they made was failing to keep up. They've invested so much in their current business infrastructure that they can't bear to part with the concept of owning songs in the traditional way.
Re:why? (Score:5, Insightful)
it effectively rewards those who failed in the marketplace, punishes those who innovated and sets up a huge, inefficient and unnecessary bureaucracy
Well, that explains why Warner and the MafiAA are wanting it. They failed in the marketplace because they refuse to innovate and adapt with the times.
Meanwhile, plenty of musicians who are experimenting with new business models are finding that they can make more money and appeal to more fans.
And of course, that's the other thing that scares the shit out of the MafiAA - the new business models make them obsolete.
Re:why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More reasons why it's a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, those big fancy American labels sell here too. Sometimes in this fancy store called walmart. do you have those in america? Well we do anyway, they are very popular here.
What I meant was the local, Canadian market for movies and music, both local and imported, hasn't collapsed despite the fact that p2p sites present a free and legal alternative. I know it's presumptuous to think that a little country with approximately the same population of California could be used as a test case for a country with a population ten times the size but I'd be willing to stick my neck out there and say that it could.
But I don't want to subsidize mediocrity! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just a fancy way of the music industry trying to hook up an IV drip tube to everybody's credit card account. It is like Netflix, but with music.
My first problem with this is that the music industry is only interested in promoting big-hit mass-market stuff that applies to the lowest common denominator. Excuse me, but I don't want to give my money to Britney Spears.
My second problem is that I want to be able to opt out of paying for more than I use.
My third problem is that a structure like this gives the music industry too much leverage in the internet world, and I prefer a free internet.
Never, I say!
Re:More reasons why it's a bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember copyright is what protects FOSS... That's why I am a big fan of copyright.
FOSS would do just fine without copyright. The success of FOSS is because of dedicated communities of volunteers and commitment to principles of openness and sharing.
Copyright helps FOSS in the sense that someone can't just scoop up a GPL'd project, modify it, and start selling it without releasing their modifications, but even if they could, that doesn't mean the project wouldn't exist in the first place.
the civil list (Score:3, Insightful)
No one wants an American car. Few people are willing to pay plastics discs of music. Why are we wasting our time trying to save these failed business plans. The executives are clearly not able to turn a profit. Why do we think the are entitled to their income.
I know that everyone says they are too big fail, and what about the jobs. Well, I still believe in America. I believe that they failure represents an opportunity, not a termination. If these companies are no longer wasting resources, well those resources will be available to other more innovative firms.
As far as the job losses, and 'main street' argument. How many houses have been saved since the bankers stole $400 billion from the american taxpayer. And how many jobs did Chrysler say there were going to cut as soon as their handout is given? Here is a thing to think about. One trillion dollars pays for almost 150,000 so-called welfare recipients. People who have and raise families, pay rent, spend all the benefits at the grocery store for food and necessities. they don't buy jets, figure how to screw a person coming in for a loan, or go crying to washington for a bailout. Here is one thing I think we can all agree on. A person pulling in $7000 a year is much more likely to go out and look for a job, or create a job, than a person pulling in 40K a year making cars no one wants.
"The Creative Business" (Score:3, Insightful)
There's something about art that doesn't readily lend itself to business. Actually, there are a lot of somethings about art that doesn't lend itself well to business.
1. Art is often temporal even though some is timeless. And you just never know when it may become interesting again. But instead of letting the people have their art after a specified time has passed, the business people have bribed legislators to push the expiration date on are back "forever" denying the public their side of the bargain... the side of the bargain that says "we will respect your copyright for a while and then you let us have it."
2. Art is a matter of taste and opinion and therefore has different value to different people. Business puts it all in the same sized and shaped box and puts it all on a shelf with similar prices with no refund if you don't happen to like it or think it is worth it. There is no standard measure for quality, and it is quite difficult to quantify or appraise.
3. Art cannot be duplicated effectively. When art is duplicated and copied, all copies and sometimes even the original loses its value. The industrialization of art demeans the art and the artists. There is nothing wrong with one-hit-wonders -- they are sometimes the best songs ever and if that's all that ever comes out, then that should be just fine and we should appreciate it. Trying to duplicate artists is even worse... how many boy-bands were there before they eventually got so tiresome that people couldn't stand any of them any longer? The same goes for movies... how many "Rocky" movies? How many Star Treks, Star Wars, Indiana Jones or Lethal Weapons will the market bear? There is some value in fandom and unquestionably some movies demand sequels, but how much is too much? And worse, how many of the "same movie" will they make because they thought a "formula" was successful and worth repeating? Will we run out of comic book heroes before they move on the nursery rhymes and classic children's stories?
People are tired of it and getting moreso. I believe we are getting to a point at which civil disobedience is most certainly in order. Copyright law has forgotten its half of the bargain and so I feel the bargain is null-an-void. Screw the copyright industrialists. They aren't the creators. They are just the people abusing and exploiting the creativity of others. Many artists are demonstrably showing their own disobedience to the masters of media by publishing in their own ways. It is for that reason alone that "music taxes" should never be allowed to exist. There is more than one path for money to flow and more than one medium for art to exist, reside or be recorded upon. Bittorrent isn't used exclusively for sharing illegal media and MP3 format isn't used exlusively by copyright infringers. These copyright industrialists no longer and arguably never have controlled the entire marketplace and therefore have no claim to tax the entirety of music or any other art form.
Old, lame joke gets new life (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it's easier to sit around on your ass and complain and mutter ominously about job losses while holding out your hand than it is to get up, lose some metaphorical weight and breathe some new life into the industry by - GASP - doing something different. Especially when your lobby group is intimately acquainted with the government.
Reminds me of an old joke:
Q: Why do they bury prairie farmers only two feet underground?
A: So they can still get their hands out.
Substitute "entertainment industry executives" for "farmers" and the joke gets new life. See? Even I can do it!
Re:More reasons why it's a bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. When a law is abusive, it is the citizen's duty to protest and get the law changed. Violation of the law should be the means of second-to-last resort[1] (revolution, of course, being the last resort).
I believe the rule of law is of huge importance to the efficient functioning of society, and immediate disregard for any unliked law, even abusive ones, leads ultimately to undermining the foundation of cooperative society.
[1] Special exception: laws which, by their nature, prevent one from further recourse against that law -- such as laws against free speech, laws against the right to bear arms, etc.
Re:Possibly Incorrect Assumption (Score:3, Insightful)
How about no. I want my money to go to what I choose. Just in the music world, there are many, many acts/groups/people that I would refuse to support.
Just as with grouped charities(Combined Federal Campaign). There are many subgroups that I would rather not, and will not, support. Period.
I don't want everyone to have a share. I want *my* money to go where *I* want.
and a bigger why.... (Score:5, Insightful)
So the bigger "why" is this: Why can't we just agree that taxes in general are a bad thing? It's not just the music tax that would be bad, it's almost all of them. Of course some very minimal taxes are necessary to build just enough government to protect our freedoms from anarchy and external threats, and to provide for a very few public goods like roads, but otherwise taxes are bad. Any time you take money in the form of taxes, you are taking money out of the economy that could have been used productively, and giving it to government which, without the pressure of market forces, is not going to have any incentive to use those resources in an optimal way.
And for those who are skeptical, I think I need to go no further for an example than to point to President Elect Obama's appointments for cabinet and agency heads. It's not the "who is appointed" that matters, it's the how freakin' many are appointed. Seriously, its like he's appointed three or four cabinet or agency heads a day for the past month! We started out this country with only three secretaries. Are all these cabinet positions actually providing a service? You've got the department of energy with nearly 30 billion dollars, a department that was created by Jimmy Carter to help us achieve energy security and independence. Obviously that didn't happen, and in fact we've gone the opposite direction, so what exactly are they doing over there with all those billions? Then you have the department of education (also created by da man Jimmy Carter) with what, 60 billion a year? They are supposed to ensure our children have a good education, yet we spend more money per capita on students than anywhere in the world and have some of the worst results of any industrialized nation. What in the world are they doing over there with all that money, besides handing large sums directly to the teachers unions?
I think you see my point. You can go right down the list... secretary of health and human services, secretary of housing and urban development (that's been a real bright spot of success, right?), secretary of agriculture, secretary of labor, secretary of veterans affairs (we need a whole cabinet branch for this?), etc. We've taken hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars out of the economy annually through taxes and given it to these guys. Is that productive, especially in comparison to letting that money drive growth in our economy, which raises the prosperity of every single citizen?
Taxes are a bad thing... they simply allow the bureaucracy to expand to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. I think Dave Ramsey said it best when he said that the economy is a wild, powerful dog, happy and free. And the government and its taxes are a tick on the backside of that dog. A tick that, in some of the more productive sectors of our economy, is easily 40% of the size of the dog!
Re:and a bigger why.... (Score:4, Insightful)
but all of these taxes are not vanishing into a black hole. they are giving people jobs, and this money is used to pay salaries. those salaries are then used to buy things (perhaps even at a store owned by a friend or relative of yours)
its not just roads that taxes support, it's police men, fire fighters, librarians, teachers, soldiers, the agriculture industry, the automotive industry, research grants, small business grants, (and in my country, doctors and nurses)
taxes pay for civilization. sure, things may go way to far, bureaucracy is wasteful and inefficient, but what is the alternative?
Overall, would you rather live the heavily taxed life you live now, or would you like to keep all your money, but have no roads, no public education, no security, no fire protection, no nation defense, no libraries, no public parks, no affordable foods, no technological progress due to a lack of funds, etc.?
Re:and a bigger why.... (Score:4, Insightful)
poverty rate is about 12.5% [census.gov] One in 8 people in the US live in poverty. That is bad for a developed nation, worse than Thailand for instance.
I agree with the incarceration stats, but the poverty stat is misleading. "Poverty" in the US isn't what it is in Thailand. Eligibility for government assistance is determined by income level, which determines "poverty". Many impoverished people are receiving food, rent, and utility subsidies, which allow them to have food, housing, heat, and electricity on the cheap which frees up their "poverty" wages for things like satellite TV and overpriced used cars. They watch 300 channels of color TV every night, while impoverished people in Thailand are living in cardboard boxes and picking through garbage dumps looking for recyclables to trade in for food money. When you start judging poverty by the percentage of people living in squalor and picking through garbage cans to survive, the US is much better than Thailand.
Re:why? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the biggest barrier to growth is the lack of music talent now compared to the times past which saw explosive growth in the 70's and 80's.
There's just as much talent now as there was in the '70s. Don't forget there was also quite a lot of crap in the '70s, but that's not what gets remembered. We remember the classics. There was an enormous amount of crap in the 80s that nobody remembers anymore (except for Rick Astley).
And then there's the fact that record companies don't like to invest in new artist (except for artists they created and control), so new artists have to work really hard to get any exposure. Well, I'm sure this effect also existed in the '70s, but maybe it's gotten stronger now.
At least, it did until recently. Now all of a sudden completely unknown artists can get exposure on MySpace or YouTube and score a big hit. Artists and customers in control, which is the way it should be. And that is exactly the biggest fear of the record companies: we're about to cut out the middle man who used to decide who succeeds and what we listen to.
Tax-funded arts and sciences are just what we need (Score:2, Insightful)
The RIAA doesn't want their proposal to be called a tax, for good reason. If everyone called this a tax, then people would start asking why the RIAA is in charge of levying taxes. The taxpayers would demand a say in where the money goes; we'd want to eliminate the middleman or at least choose a non-profit organization as the middleman. In a world where ideas are distributed freely whether or not we want them to be, taxation is a whole lot more enforcable than intellectual property. The recording industry sees this, and they're trying to transition to the new system while keeping themselves in a position of power.
Call me a socialist if you'd like, or complain that you don't want to fund someone else's idea of art, but what we've got now and what the RIAA is trying to create are a hell of a lot worse than taxes. I believe the taxpayer will see a significant return on their investment in the form of technological and cultural progress.
Re:More reasons why it's a bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)
So you obey all the speed limits? More seriously, you would have obeyed the Fugitive Slave Laws after the Dredd Scott Decision? Assuming, of course, that you disagree with the DSD and the FS Laws.
Re:More reasons why it's a bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you should look up the concept of civil disobedience (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience).
Of course, it means that one would publicly violate the law and face the consequences directly, not break the law in secret for self gain.
Exactly. There's a big, big difference between publicly breaking a law out of protest against that law, and breaking it secretly for personal gain. I have a lot of respect for people who do the former, and none whatsoever for those who do the latter.