But if I get taxed £20, i'll be sure to download at least £200 worth of media.

I predict the following strategy:

1) Stop suing.
2) Collect data on the rise of file-sharing to justify their lawsuits.
3) Start suing
4) ???
5) Profit.

Well, I'm not sure about #5.

I know this sounds like the start of a bad joke, but this seems to be a fairly simple principle. When the USSR made it nearly impossible to get normal goods that the public wanted, an underground sprang up to fill the need. This is simple supply and demand economics. To generalize, making things overly expensive and tied to one internet connected device is only going to encourage a larger underground market.

People, on the whole, want to do the right thing, but you should not deprive them of their right to do whatever they want with things they have legally bought, or they will circumvent it. Humans adapt, learn, and defeat stupid things like copy protection and vendor-lock in all the time. If they really want to decrease piracy, then they should stop price gouging, stop overly restrictive DRM, allow better "try before you buy" methods, and truly embrace college communities via viral marketing techniques rather than call them criminals.

But hey, you already knew this. At this point, we're just beating a dead horse with this argument.

No, it's a NIGHTMARE.

Why should the music industry get a "yearly fee" from everyone with an internet connection? What if you never download music?

Never mind that if the music industry actually managed to make this happen, they could essentially STOP making music. Why would they bother? They'd be making billions of dollars a year on the *fees*!

A tax (because that's what it is) to keep an industry that produces entertainment/luxury products in business? Fuck that. It's total insanity, and if it ever does happen, the end of the world is near. Seriously.

"Is there anything the RIAA can do to reduce illegal file-sharing without generating massive amounts of bad publicity?"

Well, LOTS of things.
1. Stop treating their clients as criminals, (see earlier /. article on big downloaders also being the biggest purchasers.
2. Make more of their catalog available, faster, and more easily, to more paid download services.
2. Skip the DRM crap, (which will save money, too)
3. Divert the cash currently wasted on criminal clowns like MediaSentry and Sony rootkits to efforts to educate the public on how to download music safely, legally & cheaply.
4. Ink deals with content creators that take into account all revenue streams, (including concerts, the real money-spiners for many artists these days), with a fair share for all and which takes into consideration the investment made by production organisations in developing new talent.
5. Make it easy for people to buy/access, and archive/backup 'premium/HiRes/lossless' content (see 'DRM' above).
6. Promote standards for inteeoperability between various media storage and playback devices. Would I pay for to have my vast mp3 collection automagically tagged and sorted, with the ability to stream/upload to any device I own, and maybe grab the video if I want? Well, yes!

Now I'm going to stop dreaming, and go back to helping my teenage daughter convert a YouTube pop video for use on her iPod.

STOP BUYING AND/OR DOWNLOADING COMMERCIAL MUSIC.

Just stop. Seriously. Boycott any and all bands that go through publishers that have any affiliation whatsoever with these criminals. And yes, regardless of what you think, the RIAA ARE indeed criminals. I'm not talking "criminals" as in America's law, I'm talking "criminals" as in moral and ethical laws. Think "LAWFUL EVIL" for all you D&D fans out there. The only difference between you and them are dollar signs. That goes for the MPAA too.

If we could all go one, maybe two years without buying any music or movies (and I'm sure that's possible...it's called self-restraint) that have ties to these asswipes, they WILL go away because they won't have those pretty little dollar signs any more. Now is the BEST time to do this because of the economy. They're more vulnerable than ever.

I sure as hell do. But not intentionally. I hear something on the radio, google the lyrics, figure out who wrote it, go to Amazon and figure out what's on the CD. Torrent or other p2p and grab the album, listen to it, and say "glad I didn't pay money for THAT" and delete it.

If there were a way to return crappy music I'd feel better about paying for it, but they assume if you open the package all you did was copy it and try to get it for free. If they want to assume I'm a pirate I have to play their game, and it ends up hurting them.

Typical artist contract has fees included with the assumption that albums will get damaged or otherwise unsaleable in transit. They have to turn this around and realize that digital copies will have the same fate - losses due to a marginal amount of piracy.

They paid for airtime in order to get higher billboard rankings - I save them the money and play it for myself, no cost. They think I'm a pirate if i listen before buying so I do. And in the end, I'm really doing my ISP a disservice by downloading so much crap I have a roughly 85% chance of having no interest in.

The old RIAA tactics didn't thwart downloading one iota, so it's hard to believe them 'dropping the lawsuits' will have much, if any, impact on the scenario.

The fact is The record companies that the RIAA represents, put out pretty crappy generic music. It's formulaic, and meant to sell - not be innovative or good.

The 'Indie' record industry has taken the place of most big record labels, by providing music that is more in line with what the artist wants to produce. The music is better, more creative, different, and quite honestly - what people prefer to hear.

If the fact that we live in a society that values toilet paper more than theater offends you, then you need to make the decisions in your life that reflect this.

Um, I consider myself a pretty artsy person, but I value toilet paper pretty highly.

Most engineers understand the concept of "supply and demand". Basically, there are more people capable and willing to do children's theater than business analysis. How would you "correct" this?

The summary quite clearly states that it is a 20 pound a year tax that is being considered. Other posters are still absolutely right however, that those who are not currently downloading music or films (and I reckon that it is still the vast majority of internet users) will be paying to subsidise the activities of those who want to continue their illegal activities. Oh, come on, filesharers may think it is their right to copy whatever they want to, but it is still illegal. The copyright is still held by someone and they have said that no copies can be made without their express permission so, whether we like it or not, under the current law it is illegal. So to those who would like to benefit from any potential tax that I might have to pay I suggest that you get the law changed rather than believe that you are some sort of Robin Hood character who is actually doing the world a favour.

Great list, I'd only add one item. Stop trying to bankrupt internet radio. Use at as a medium for promoting new music. Commercial radio is real good at promoting the twenty or so 'hits' that they play over and over and over. Internet radio could be good for promoting everything else. That is if the music industry wasn't intent on killing it.

Excellent points. All true. However, that's not the question.

Businesses already know how to maximize profit. The question was how to reduce piracy.

LK

Not really. I don't care if a given 16-year-old kid is guilty - I don't want him sued out of his college fund [mit.edu]. If the RIAA had sued for reasonable amounts (say, $5-$10 per proven upload) and gone about it fairly, I might have a little sympathy. As it is, they're on the short list of people I'm going looking for if we ever have another civil war.

Check Google for blank media tax. [google.com]

Hasn't stopped them from pursuing copyright violations so far.

You must remember these people are completely desperate. Their business model is dead. And it's a model that gave them millions for *nothing*. Sit behind a desk and collect royalties. Who wouldn't want that to continue? And if you happen to have the morals of a shark, why not try something like this? Double dipping would hardly be the least of their sins.

The pension, healthcare and road systems are all things that are "good", and most if not all of them are wanted by the vast majority of normal people. The problem with a "tax" on illegal downloading is most honest people would be a bit miffed if you told them THEY owed $10 because some kid across the street wants new music without paying full sticker price.

I shouldn't be forced to pay for music I don't listen to.

Falcon

If the music industry wants to set things on fire again, they should:
1. Fire the RIAA, cancel all memberships, sue them for anything they can think of in order to firmly disassociate themselves from those lawyers. No one has done more to tarnish their image. No one gives more negative vibes.
2. Approve of and highly encourage music downloading, even pirating. Counter intuitively (to the labels), people who download music represent the most valuable customers in terms of money spent.
3. Encourage local development of musicians. That includes sponsorship of venues, regular contests, musical education, and paying the top artists to tour while actively encouraging other company sponsorship.
4. Develop centralized music delivery systems which offer rock bottom prices and use the latest p2p protocols. Stop discouraging internet radio stations through draconian licensing schemes.
5. Open up new venues by sponsoring community events with local artists. Offer location specific search features for the delivery services. This will provide a jumping off point for other products such as news and sports events if that is a desired pursuit.
6. Begin a program of purpose-built venues in cities lacking such. Vector local, statewide and national content to those venues with incentives and sponsorship.
7. Build your industry around the environment and event rather than tired and static delivery of content. It is only when that content can remain alive and dynamic that the music will flow again.

The reality is the business model is dead. The publisher is no longer required to publish the music, the creators of the music can simply do it themselves. The time period in history for charging for 'dead' music rather than live music is over, get over it already. It was basically a parasitical business segment in society and basically did nothing to add to the economy it just basically lived off it.

So when it is gone, it means that money spent upon that parasitical part of the economy will simply be spent in other often more substantial, productive and, as it turns out less destructive areas of the economy. So distributed music media is going the direction of the vinyl record. The only thing the music publishing industry ever really provided was a massive public relations equals bull shit mass marketing engine of greed, oh yeah and how could I forget, 'sex, drugs and rock and roll'.

So tell me, why is it that supposedly conservative politicians and politically motivated religious groups around the world want to prop up that particular industry. I mean, is there some sort of serious mental disconnect between them and that whole 'sex, drugs and rock and roll' thing, the industry is famed for it and even goes out of it's way to promote, sell it and, in reality specifically targets the most vulnerable group in society with that message, children.

Anything the RIAA can do? No. They're one-trick ponies: "OBEY, or we will destroy you!" By definition, they have been trying to generate bad publicity, because if they don't there is no upside, no deterrence, no reduction in widespread copyright infringement. Not that they've been particularly successful anyway.

Now that doesn't mean that nothing can be done. The studios can do a lot, if they're willing to accept that they can't ever return to the halcyon days of total distribution control. There's still plenty of money to be made, but they'll have to drop their past century of sleazy business practices, and start competing on the merits of their products.

I don't hold out much hope of that happening, but hey, even pigs have been known to fly now and then.

That's because many people believe their opinion to be the only valid one, that their world view is Right, and that everyone else's world view is Wrong.

What's wrong with a song about raping or murdering or stealing or taking drugs or being a douchebag? Sure we don't want people doing these things and don't condone them, but well; thought police much?

For the rest of your comment, while pretty much everyone would agree with you that there's a lot of rubbish that never should have been made, you'll find very little agreement on what the rubbish is and what the good stuff is.

The time period in history for charging for 'dead' music rather than live music is over

Nobody ever bought music. We bought concert tickets, bar owners rented bands that could putt butts in seats, music lovers bought LPs and tapes.

When you bought that LP, that cassettes, that 8 track or that CD you weren't buying music, you were buying the physical item the music was encoded on. You can sell your old LPs but you can't sell the music that's on them. When you buy a ticket, you are buying a service, not music.

As you say, in the analog days making LPs was far too costly for anyone but a publisher to do, but now any band can record their own CDs and distribute their own MP3s (which are an excellent form of advertising for the band). The labels are no longer needed by anyone.