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Music Media

Kazaa, Verizon Propose Compulsory Music Licensing 455

Posted by timothy from the no-you-pay-us dept.
akb writes "USA Today is reporting on an interesting new alliance between Kazaa, the dominant file sharing network, and Verizon, a company with revenues of $67 billion. The two companies are floating a proposal to ISPs and the computer and manufacturing industries to lobby to force the music industry to license their music. Royalties would be payed to artists directly, thus circumventing the stranglehold the RIAA has on the music industry."
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Kazaa, Verizon Propose Compulsory Music Licensing More

Kazaa, Verizon Propose Compulsory Music Licensing

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  • Sounds like a great idea, and it'd most likely result in Verizon and Kazaa being the sole distributor of said licensed music, making them lots of $.

    As long as the RIAA doesn't get to do the fucked up stuff it does now, I'm all for it. As long as it's an open market, so we're not just stuck with one distributor.

    • Re:Sounds Good (Score:4, Insightful)

      by qqtortqq ( 521284 ) <mark@doodem a n .org> on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @06:21PM (#3520817)
      The way I see it, all this garbage will end soon. There is absolutely no way to control media- any encryption scheme will be circumvented in no time flat. My belief is that artists will begin to give their music away for free, understanding that if they do not give it away for free it will be gotten for free anyways. Where they will make money is in live performances. I dont care how fat of a pipe you have, there is nothing that can be done to truly replicate a concert experience- no amount of high tech audio and video will ever be the same as being there at the concert.

      Artists will encourage people to download their music and give away promo cd's for free to entice people into becoming fans to get them to pay $45-$80 to see the band live. It will be a revolution in the music industry- everything will have turned upside down, but there is no other way. Artists need to make money somehow- except those who do it just for the love of the music, but I'm sure those artists would enjoy a bit of money and fame too.

      Just my prediction- who knows what will really happen.

      • Re:Sounds Good (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MoneyT ( 548795 )
        Artists will be able to make money off albums, but they will have to do it the right way. They will have to make you want to buy the album. Include original artwork etc (take a look at old records, some of the artwork that was on the sleeves of those is probably worth more than the album itself. People also like to have original copies. Artists can make money off albums, but they're going to have to cost a lot less. That's where self recording comes in. The technology availible today should alow most artists to make a record their own albums well enough to get popular, and then be able to use that money to sign the recording company, not the other way arround.

        However, I do agree that the real test of artists will be in their performances. That's where they will need to make their money.

        • Re:Sounds Good (Score:2, Insightful)

          by qqtortqq ( 521284 )
          You make very good points. CD artwork can be replicated- but if prices are lowered to a reasonable level it would be easier to just buy the CD instead of downloading the songs, then cover/artwork, then the artwork on the cd, then assembling it all.

          I only buy CDs from DIY artists. I refuse to allow my money to go to the giant record companies knowing that only about ten cents goes to the artist, versus seven out of ten dollars for a DIY cd, subtracting $3 for production costs.
      • Its about making fans pay for access to new music. why shouldnt a musician be able to take a box to their concert and like a vending machine people download mp3s into their portible players from these boxes.
    • While still not a perfect model, it cant get much worse than what we have now with the RIAA controlling everything, and wanting to control more than they already have.
    • Recording Industry Association of America president Hilary Rosen calls the proposal "the most disingenuous thing I've ever heard. It's ridiculous."

      Strange, I thought that the proposal was one of the most rational proposals I have heard yet.

      Speaks volumes about character of Hilary Rosen.

    • Re:Sounds Good (Score:5, Insightful)

      by joe90 ( 48497 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @06:31PM (#3520885) Homepage
      Can someone explain to me how the Kazaa/Verizon deal would not eventually end up being RIAA with a different name? I'd wager that that the artist does not see the $1/month that gets charged, because a processing/admin/overhead fee would get applied against that $1/month, and each year (because of additional compliance costs, infrastructure costs, billing costs etc.) that fee would get just a bit bigger.

      Sounds like a take-over bid to me.
    • id much rather just pay the artists directly
    • result in Verizon and Kazaa being the sole distributor of said licensed music

      No, compulsory license means anyone can get access to it at the same rate.

  • RIGHT ON! (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    About time someone started sending the money to the people who slave away to make the art.

  • about time.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gol64738 ( 225528 )
    i've been asking myself this question over and over:
    Who does the RIAA benefit? themselves?

    oh, when the RIAA was first enacted, it's purpose was to protect intellectual property rights worldwide and the First Amendment rights of artists.

    however, now it seems that the RIAA doesn't even acknowledge the artists anymore.

    it's time for RIAA reform, or do away with them completely.

    Verizon's plans are a step in the right direction...to help artists make money making music. isn't that what it should all be about?

    • Aha! (Score:4, Funny)

      by cscx ( 541332 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @06:19PM (#3520796) Homepage
      Statements like

      Who does the RIAA benefit? themselves?

      -and-

      however, now it seems that the RIAA doesn't even acknowledge the artists anymore.

      only go to show what you don't really know:

      That is that the RIAA is a secret Iraqui agency working for Saddam Hussein. What seems to be the RIAA's plan to take over the world is really Saddam trying to take over the world. All that money that supposedly goes to the "artists" is really funneled into an Iraqui weapons program. I mean, what really happens to the artists anyway? Just look at people like Vanilla Ice, Weird Al Yankovic and Marky Mark from Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. THEY were really killed to hide the truth after their money was secretly sent to Saddam. The next thing you know, he'll be commanding all the world's computers using something called "Brilliant Digital Projector..."

      Or, it could just be a scheme run by The Brain from Pinky and the Brain.

  • This is great... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Xerithane ( 13482 ) <xerithane AT nerdfarm DOT org> on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @06:12PM (#3520753) Homepage Journal
    The business plan amounts to $2B in revenue:

    Recording Industry Association of America president Hilary Rosen calls the proposal "the most disingenuous thing I've ever heard. It's ridiculous."
    The logical statement:

    "It would be like me opening a video store, charging 10 times what others were charging and only offering videos in the Beta format," Guerinot says. "In any business, when you have billions of downloads occurring, you don't say we're going to ignore that market and try to create something else. You serve your customers."

    Why the hell is Hillary Rosen in charge anyway? Attempting to change an industry that already exists and is going strong into what you want it to be is stupid. This is a great turnabout though, I'm glad to see some heavy hitters start going against the RIAA. I'd gladly pay $1/mo to download music legit. Assuming the majority of that $1 went to the musicians. I'm paying for the network from my own bandwidth and hard drive space, and I'm glad that Guerinot seems to understand that.
    • Assuming the majority of that $1 went to the musicians.


      One problem: Which musicians? The fair way would be to track what people are downloading, and dole out the money proportionally based on that, but trying to track everybody's downloads opens up several cans of worms...

  • Kazaa lobbyist Phil Corwin says a $1-a-month fee per user on Internet providers alone (it's unclear whether costs would be passed along to subscribers)

    Of course the cost will be passed along to subscribers. How can that not be clear? Only a moron would willing give up $1/user/month and get nothing out of it. The ISPs don't gain anything from this venture. If anything, they lose because it will encourage more Internet activity and increase the bandwith costs. So if anything, the subscribers will pay more than $1/month.

    Frankly, I don't understand why I can't just buy the music directly from the artists, at $1/song.

    • I think the question might be, who cares?

      I'm willing to pay a few extra bucks a month if it means I no longer have to switch filesharing programs every week.
    • Indeed. Though certainly I, and probably most everyone that has the extra cash for internet access has an extra buck or 5 (probably from the cd's they now don't need to buy) to access what amounts to (nearly) every song ever made.

      This sounds fairly communist (though good, since music has always been "for the people"), and I'd wager that kazaa and especially Verizon have more at stake than good will. Hell, the pair almost make TW/AOL look good. What next? SBC and MTV will pair up?
    • Well even if it's not directly "passed on" it always affects the consume, usually to the tune of $1 worth of customer service, new equipment that doesn't get purchased, or just lower standards in general. It's economics...

    • Re:Well, duh! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by reflexreaction ( 526215 )
      I frankly like this idea. But it stinks a bit of socialism and communism. Let me explain. I am an anabased pirate, I love my music videos etc and I love getting them for free simply because it is easier than paying for them. Plus I prefer the digital format, it's much easier to find a movie that I just DL and play it rather than hunting for a DVD. A pay when you want to pay model simply doesn't work, there are simply too many people like me around who are willing to get things for free. But if a cost was transferred to the providers of this technology, artist would be compensated. We already see this kind of thing in surcharges/taxes whatever on blank CD to help cover the cost of piracy (only people on the /. community know about that little nugget). I know that artist, as well as programmers need to be compensated. Intellectual property is not generated for free. This brings us to the distribution issue.

      How would we know how to pay each artist?

      I would have no problem with this fee as long as it reasonable. But how is the money distributed is the big issue. Who gets to decide who gets how much and why. Who sits on that pool of money dooling it out. Have you seen a family fighting over an estate?

      If this proposal were to go through we would likely have a quasi-governmental agency in charge of talent, giving out money from this pool, while the masses of computer users (perhaps pirates) pay a talent tax so that they can download all they want. How would we measure the traffic? Would this agency try to encode some information into the file to measure how many times something was transferred within Kazaa's network. Would there be a floor amount of money that would be paid to artist because they are part of this consortium? It seems simpler to "Pay the artist" but there will inevitably be a middle man to deal with.

      • Blockquoth the poster:

        If this proposal were to go through we would likely have a quasi-governmental agency in charge of talent, giving out money from this pool,

        We have this already. It's called "the RIAA". :)

      • Re:Well, duh! (Score:2, Interesting)

        by clone304 ( 522767 )

        The real problem is that the smart artists would then all setup beowulf clusters on OC-3's to pipe their own songs in massive parallel to /dev/null, racking up as much as they can of that $2 billion.

        .
    • $1 a song? how about 25 cents a song, maybe 5 bucks a cd

  • Far too sane, look who is talking... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by killthiskid ( 197397 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @06:15PM (#3520775) Homepage Journal

    My first thought: this is far to sane to actually take place. Then I read:


    Kazaa lobbyist Phil Corwin says a $1-a-month fee per user on Internet providers alone (it's unclear whether costs would be passed along to subscribers) would generate $2 billion yearly: "We're talking about a modest fee on all the parties who benefit from the availability of this content."

    Recording Industry Association of America president Hilary Rosen calls the proposal "the most disingenuous thing I've ever heard. It's ridiculous."


    Sooo, let me get this straight: it is riciculous to directly pay the artist who produce the music.


    Well, this is very telling. I sincerly hope compulsory license comes to be... it seems about the only way to tame the RIAA beast. Maybe it will even save internet radio.


    • Sooo, let me get this straight: it is riciculous to directly pay the artist who produce the music.

      Musicians make music, record companies produce it. Not that I agree with the cut they take or pressure they can put on the musicians and market.
    • Sooo, let me get this straight: it is riciculous to directly pay the artist who produce the music.

      But how can you pay the artists directly if they have signed away all their rights to their label?

    • What's the best way to tame the best? Revoke its corporate charter. I am certainly no proponent of a generalized corporate death penalty, but the courts should have the Supreme Courts should have the discresionary power to summarily revoke not-for-profit corporate charters based on the history of the organization. The RIAA has a history of legal terrorism against any potential threat. It wields state force as a weapon via the courts in order to maintain the status quo, a strategy irreconsilably at odds with free market capitalism.

      What should terrify the RIAA is the possibility that the USSC will pull a Roe v Wade re copyright law; that suddenly out of no where it will take a fish hook to copyright law and essentially disembowl it. That is what Roe v Wade did to abortion laws. There is far more constitutional ground to oppose the DMCA than old anti-abortion laws.....

      That ruling on virtual child pornography should have been a wake up call for the RIAA and MPAA because it shows that there is a hardline utilitarian streak to the current USSC. That ruling showed the public that utility matters to most of the justices, especially ones like Scalia that typically rule against big government (which is what the DMCA really is, an excuse to increase police powers).

      A good legal argument to use before the USSC against the DMCA is that it violates the first amendment. The bill of rights was ratified AFTER the body of the Constitution. Therefore federal copyright law must be restricted by the first amendment since it came AFTER the clause in Article I, Section 8 establishing IP enforcement powers. Since the provision that "Congress shall pass no law abridging freedom of speech" came after said section, it naturally follows that said section cannot restrict freedom of speech.

      (Now what would really be nasty is if the USSC ruled that because local governments and corporations are both chartered by state governments, the states can legally hold not for profits like the RIAA to the provisions of the bill of rights)
    • Music writer have ascap. [ascap.com] the American Society of Composer Authors and Publishers..
      The song writers get paid per play by radio stations with moneys distributed by this group which is headed by elected representatives.
      Musicians really could use something similar...There the ones getting walked all over by record companies.

  • When I first read the headline, I saw:

    "Kazaa, Verizon Propose Compulsory Music Listening"

    I got an image of being *forced* to listen to whatever music I download...

  • I'm pessimistic (Score:2, Insightful)

    by joshsnow ( 551754 )
    The "Music Industry" is unlikely grant licences which efectively cuts the royalty payment to themselves.
    All eveidence is to the contrary - start back in 1985 or whenever it was that CDs started replacing wax - the wax was more expensive to produce yet CDs cost more that the equivalent 12" LPs. I never heard about artistes getting paid more then.
    I also remember the promise of DAT - was supposed to replace casettes . That didn't happen because the "Music Industry" was paranoid about people being able to make perfect copies of LPs.
    Then there are all the artistes that get dropped like a bad habit when their records don't sell in sufficient volume to suit the record company ("Music Industry"). Of course, when the artiste wants to break the same contract, they find they can't.
    For "Music Industry" read "RIAA" in this instance.
    yes I'm rambling - it's 12:20AM and I should be asleep. Bottom line is I can't see this one suceeding unfourtanately.

  • All Hail KaZaA (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Aerog ( 324274 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @06:19PM (#3520800) Homepage
    Hmmmm. KaZaA doing something that at first seems good for people, eh? This is good! This is wonderful! All hail KaZaA! The people are happy! Music is being fairly traded! KaZaA stops their unprecedented marketing practises!

    I'm imagining this happening right before their CEO woke up in a cold sweat, screaming something about chaos. I can't see them doing anything like this unless they had some sort of hairbrained scheme to get most of this money, and/or dominate this new sharing industry. But that's preposterous. We all know KaZaA would never resort to such unscrupulous tactics.

    I'm going to have to wait this one out, and see what happens.

  • bad idea; it's just a tax. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by emshon ( 577357 ) <<rulingtheworld> <at> <hotmail.com>> on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @06:19PM (#3520801)
    seriously, why must this always be handled via legislation? We live in a free market society right, if there is a viable business model here it will be found and worked out. It should be obvious to everyone that this genie is out of the bottle.
    all this "solution" would do would be to result in a tax on internet use applied to everyone "who benefit(s) from the availability of this content." Essentially this is the same thing as putting a surcharge on blank CDs. Also since it's legislated it would be difficult to change when we discover the bugs.

    • Re:bad idea; it's just a tax. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by akb ( 39826 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @06:53PM (#3521017)
      I don't think the music industry could be described as "free market". The scarcity of its product is artificial, determined by copyright law which is the result of a bargain struck by the stakeholders. The major labels have manipulated the current bargain to gain a strangelhold on the industry.

      Now that we have new technology that will change the way the bargain works the major labels are looking to tighten their grip and kill off the potential of new competition. Read some Larry Lessig, he refers to them as the dinosaurs looking to kill off the mammals.

      The important thing to remember is that this is a bargain between all members of society. Don't believe free market drivel that tells you that you aren't a stakeholder.
    • How else do you propose to "handle" this? We live in a society of laws, and legislation is how the will of the people is expressed. The laws we currently have are incompatible with music sharing; laws can be changed. You'd prefer ... what? A "market solution"? Do you actually believe that there's a "free market" that exists? It doesn't -- the market metaphor is a way to describe certain mechanisms of exchange, not predicative, provable fact -- and it's certainly got nothing at all in common with any sort of natural law, cretinous Chicago-school idealogues or no.

      Just for the record, a $1/month/user surcharge is a goofy stupid idea, but at least it's an idea. Without someone holding a bigger stick than the RIAA's control of virtually all rights to the music that you want to listen too, we're stuck with their ideas.

      'jfb
    • At first blush I would disagree; I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with a "content tax" - or ideally, a "content redistribution." Copyright IP monopoly is a violation of the free market too, but it has beneficial effects so we make that compromise. Since IP monopolies and licensing like Copyright appear to be problematic in their enforcement and perhaps ultimately pernicious for our intellectual and economic development (not to mention basically unenforceable in any way compatible with civil liberties and human rights), by all means, let's consider alternatives for creating an incentive for art.

      The problem, however, is how the distribution works. The laws we already have that function this way are a perfect example. They're basically highway robbery - we allow the 5 major companies at the heart of the RIAA and MPAA to collect a tax! They're supposed to distribute the booty to the artists... want to guess how much of it any of them actually see? And do all artists get the same? Or some more than others? Who qualifies as a "content creator" and who doesn't?

      It's not pretty. I like the pre-DMCA status quo better (bootleggers are prosecuted, and "recreational" duplication is de facto permitted). As distribution technology gets easier, the content industry revenues gradually attenuate. It's too bad, but I won't lose any sleep - they were ushered in on a technological accident just a few years ago, and they'll be ushered out on one. There's no god-given right to become a billionare selling music. The first technological revolution in the content industry - the phonograph, and the radio - already caused a far worse tragedy, removing the livelihood of many millions of professional musicians. Life will go on.

      I wouldn't be surprised to see the net effect of all this that the middle-man is simply cut out of the transaction, and the old "semi-voluntary" model where the audience compensates the artist directly comes back once again.

    • Re:bad idea; it's just a tax. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lord Ender ( 156273 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @07:48PM (#3521315) Homepage
      "why must this always be handled via legislation?"



      Legislation is what makes Intellectual Property exist in the first place. It makes sense that changing the legislation could solve the problems with Intellectual Property law enforcement.

  • no (Score:5, Funny)

    by digitalsushi ( 137809 ) <slashdot@digitalsushi.com> on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @06:20PM (#3520805) Journal
    thus circumventing the stranglehold the RIAA has on the music industry

    No! I can not say anything nice about Verizon! I'll seize to be! Curses.. foiled.. gahh.... getting dark...

    • Re:no (Score:2)

      by akb ( 39826 )
      You should definitely be suspicious of Verizon. If they were just going to sell bits then there would be nothing to worry about. But Verizon has plans to get into content as well that's where the fat profits and high growth are, they wanna be like AOL/TW and have that "synergy" going on by owning the pipe and the content.

      They are just doing this so that they don't get cut out of the competition later. They're slow since they are so big, so it'll take them a while.

    • Re:no (Score:3, Funny)

      by Paradise Pete ( 33184 )
      I'll seize to be!

      And I'll take to go. There - let them try writing anything meaningful without those two verbs.

  • More like compulsory fees (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Wire Tap ( 61370 ) <frisina AT atlanticbb DOT net> on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @06:20PM (#3520806)
    Kazaa lobbyist Phil Corwin says a $1-a-month fee per user on Internet providers alone (it's unclear whether costs would be passed along to subscribers) would generate $2 billion yearly: "We're talking about a modest fee on all the parties who benefit from the availability of this content."

    I don't like this idea one bit. It's the same principle that would end up letting a whole host of "fees" into the bill that we get from our ISPs at the end of the month.

    It also reminds me of the college tuition bill. The tuition, and then the tens of fees tacked onto the bill, that end up summing at nearly $1000.

    Don't let people nickel and dime us to death.

    • $1-a-month.

      $2 billion yearly.

      For those of you who can't do math, I'll do it for you.

      Let's err on the side of safety and say that this generates $1.8 billion a year. That's $150,000 a month. Now, how many people in America are subscribed to an ISP? Somewhere on the order of 50%. Since when did America suddenly gain 30,000 citizens?

      I haven't seen a single news report yet that includes accurate statistics or sales.

      • i haven't seen a single post that includes accurate statistics...

        1,800,000,000 / 12 = 150,000,000 per month. and where do you get off rounding down $200,000,000?!

        this just says that there are 150,000,000+ people per year on the internet that would gain from these services. a fair claim.

      • Re:More like compulsory fees (Score:4, Insightful)

        by TrumpetPower! ( 190615 ) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @07:11PM (#3521131) Homepage

        Your math is FUBAR.

        $1,800,000,000 / 12 = $150,000,000. The U.S. population is somewhere around 300,000,000. About half of all Americans have Internet access. 50% of 300,000,000 is 150,000,000. So, yes, $1/month/customer =~ $2B/year.

        Having said that, no audio file has crossed my router that wasn't perfectly legitimate, and I don't mean ``well, I'm gonna buy the CD, anyway.'' The RIAA is scum and its executives should be thrown in jail as the corrupt rackettering thugs that they are, but I'm not willing to ``subsidize'' something that I'm not using.

        And who's to say that this new scheme won't be just as bad as what we now have with the RIAA?

        Go to concerts. Buy knick-knacks. Break copyright laws if you must, but accept the consequences--be willing to pay fines or go to jail over that downloaded MP3 or warezed Photoshop when you get caught. Lobby your lawmakers and educate your friends.

        I'll pay for my own entertainment. Don't make me pay for your yours.

        b&

  • Oh yeah I'm shocked... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by powerlinekid ( 442532 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @06:20PM (#3520808)
    Recording Industry Association of America president Hilary Rosen calls the proposal "the most disingenuous thing I've ever heard. It's ridiculous." Oh theres a shocker... someone comes up with a decent idea that doesn't involve the RIAA making more money and Rosen calls them disingenuous. Ha, what the hell is the RIAA then? Like they really serve a point by paying the artist pretty much nothing and profiting on other people's work. Yeah whos the insincere bastard here. Ironically this idea, no matter how crazy it is... might just work. I'd be willing to give an extra dollar a month for internet if it meant i could download music without worrying about the RIAA or kazaa using spyware (which I'd hope would dissapear if they actually had real money exchanging hands, that and i'm sure Verizon can spare some change).
    • One point I would like to make is this:
      People say the RIAA is evil and I agree.
      People say that the RIAA doesn't do anything and I disagree.

      The labels do provide promotion and make famous the bands that they want to be famous with our money and the artists' money. Now, is it worth selling your soul as most musicians do? Debatable. I certainly believe that it would be better if the buying public made famous the musicians that deserve it.
      That's all.

  • Could Change Some things (Score:4, Insightful)

    by yasth ( 203461 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @06:21PM (#3520811) Homepage Journal
    There is no realistic way you could just pay the artists.
    • the label does promotion for the artist
    • the label records the songs
    While the labels are almost certainly ripping off the artists, they are doing something, and can't be excluded so easily, I mean no matter what the studio tech has to eat. Of course, all new contracts will simply agree to the label being a "marketing corporation" and getting x% of any revenue generated by the artist anyways.
    • I don't know about you, but I for one, could do without most of the promotion the labels put out. All the promotion I need is the music not being crap.

      Don't say I would never be exposed to any new music either, since I discover most music I like myself, in ways that cost record labels little to nothing. I think artists would be able to pay for recording if they were getting a fair amount of compensation for their work.

      In short, greedy labels do nothing nothing for me. Out with them.
    • No, the artist pays to record the song. It comes out of their advance from the label and my understanding is unless they're already succesful they have very little say about how it's spent. Most artist promotion today is also little better than sanitized radio station payola (do a search on Clear Channel.) The labels still do something but not anything that couldn't be done better elsewhere.

  • erm (Score:2)

    by SnAzBaZ ( 572456 )
    What about all the people that arn't technically minded and don't want to download music? I don't see this working at all, because lets face it, the majority of people want to buy their music in a physical form of a CD with the nice packaging etc, rather than fiddle around on their computer.
  • Recording Industry Association of America president Hilary Rosen calls the proposal "the most disingenuous thing I've ever heard. It's ridiculous."
    Yeah of course it's ridiculous Hilary - if this catches on, not only would artists get paid (maybe _better_ than they get paid under the current cartel scheme) but the RIAA would quickly become pointless... and then where would your job go? Boo hoo.

    If a lot of recording artists put their support behind this proposal, the RIAA might be just a memory in a few years. I like it. Of course the devil is in the details - how to track usage while respecting privacy, how to pay artists...

    but it might work...

  • This is What's Wrong with This (Score:3, Interesting)

    by carrier lost ( 222597 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @06:28PM (#3520860) Homepage
    Computer manufacturers, blank CD makers, ISPs and software firms such as Kazaa will pool funds and pay artists directly.

    This still presupposes that the consumers of the above items are going to engage in 'illegal' copying.

    I think we should adamantly refuse to support any proposal which presupposes guilt - I think it's a dangerous precedent.

    MjM

    &#60&#37&#61&#36SomethingHomerSimpsonSaid&#37&#62

  • Better the devil you know? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Disevidence ( 576586 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @06:29PM (#3520868) Homepage Journal
    While I find the RIAA practices despicable to say the least, I can't exactly bring myself to trust Verizon or Kazaa, especially the latter.

    Im not sure of whether a case of the lesser evil is really going to change things in the music industry.

    The RIAA doesn't want the music control being handled by someone else, for obvious reasons. At the same time, they afraid to go into the online market properly for the fear of competition, thus they think that by suing the living crap out of anything online, it will eventually go away.

    But trusting Kazaa to provide a music service? The same guys that have done a deal with brilliant digital entertainment?

    Why can't a group of artists, group together, make their own online service, and provide it a lower cost than the RIAA? By being legal, this will literally force the RIAA to react with an online service thats cheaper, and thats good for consumers.

    But until the RIAA have competition from the artist's themselves (and popular ones), they will continue to fight in the courts. The Kazaa/Verizon idea is a bad idea from the getgo.
    • well, at least one "group of artists," and popular ones, has endorsed the Verizon/Kazaa plan, at least according to the article. Why isn't the choice of this "group of artists" as legitimate as your suggestion that they start their own ISP? It sounds a bit paternalistic, like "I know what's good for this group of artists, better than they do." Also, musicians are good at making music, not at running ISPs or telcos. Don't get me wrong, Verizon is not perfect and their customer service leaves much to be desired. But this is a first, important baby step of the artist end of the industry away from "RIAA way or the highway" robbery. I am quite curious to see how it goes.

  • ...especially considering they're getting essentially nothing now, any money is a major change. there was a recent article in rolling stone magazine about how the manager of some pretty big name acts (beck, no doubt, etc) had pulled his artists' songs from the RIAA-backed nonsense thing cos they weren't getting anything out of it. if this gives the artists anything resembling money, expect them to jump for it.

  • $1 per month? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ryanwright ( 450832 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @06:32PM (#3520888)
    Kazaa lobbyist Phil Corwin says a $1-a-month fee per user on Internet providers alone (it's unclear whether costs would be passed along to subscribers) would generate $2 billion yearly: "We're talking about a modest fee on all the parties who benefit from the availability of this content."

    Uh, NO, you charge the people who are using the service. Why the hell should my grandmother, who has no idea what an MP3 is, pay this fee? Make it $1 per month per file-sharing user. Hell, you could set it up like adult-check, where every P2P app queries the same database before allowing you to login. You pay a buck a month to the database administrators and they distribute the funds where appropriate.
    • Why the hell should my grandmother, who has no idea what an MP3 is, pay this fee?

      You think that's bad? Just wait until they start charging her a "porn access" fee!

      All those copyrighted images being traded, and no way to make money off them...

  • More details please... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by matthewd ( 59896 )
    From the article:
    Computer manufacturers, blank CD makers, ISPs and software firms such as Kazaa will pool funds and pay artists directly.
    What the article doesn't expand on is what computer manufacturers and blank CD makers will contribute. Define computer manufacturers first (Gateway, HP, Dell, et al or does that include the guy slapping clones together in his garage?).

    And I'm 100% against taxing blank data CDs to pay artists. We distribute our own software on CD-Rs; why should we have to pay artists for distributing our own software? Or why should someone burning Linux distributions have to pay up too? What about the other myriad non-music CD-R uses?

  • Uh oh (Score:5, Informative)

    by adam613 ( 449819 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @06:34PM (#3520903)
    Um. Let's just remember who we're talking about here...Verizon isn't any better than the RIAA when it comes to corporate citizenship...I vaguely recall them suing 2600 for registering verizonsucks.com, and they refused to install DSL in my apartment when they found out one of my computers was running Linux.

  • "The music business is a cruel money trench." (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @06:37PM (#3520918) Homepage

    What we have now: "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." -- Hunter S Thompson

    Compulsory licensing is a great idea. We have that now with radio play and with some kinds of patents. We would apply directly to the artist, or to the artist's designated representative, for a license. Instead of a band making 2 cents an album, it would get all the money.
  • You should not have to pay $1 WHETHER OR NOT you have any interest in downloading music. Likewise, people buy CDs for many things other than burning music. How about you pay artists directly for downloading their music. They give you high quality sound files. You give them cash. No record companies need apply.
  • If somehow we're going to tax the Net and distribute it to musicians (by what formula?), how about another tax to be distributed to writers? And what about visual artists? How about erotic visual artists?

    Let's be honest about it: music is just a branch of the sex industry. (Okay, we still have military music too, but you're downloading that, right?) So if we don't want a tax supporting the sex industry, we should probably disallow erotic artists, whether visual or aural. Still, shouldn't Net users everywhere pay a tax to subsidize the valuable time /.'s writers invest in the insightful (hint) public service of posts just like this one!
    ___
    • Let's be honest about it: music is just a branch of the sex industry.
      Oh really? I'm damn sure not thinking about sex when I'm listening to Rachmaninov, or any of Mozart's operas. Fear Factory doesn't make me think about sex, it makes me want to kick someone's ass, or yell at them. Opeth, Therion, .... I'm listening to them in my head right now, waiting for a hard-on, but it just isn't going to happen.

      Do you think music is nothing more than MTV? Britney Spears is nothing more than a pair of singing, bouncing tits on your TV? Fine, but don't be honest with us, be honest with yourself.

      Don't confuse musical creativity (or whatever it passes for in 90% of all music) with anything related to sex. It is possible that a song was written by someone hoping to get laid, but that's not the same thing.

  • I'm confused (Score:2, Insightful)

    by commonchaos ( 309500 )
    Ok, I've read the comments in the thread over, and I've read the article twice... what am I missing?
    how will they decide who gets the money?
    What did I miss?

  • Does this mean... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by $beirdo ( 318326 )
    ...that my ISP will now be on board with tracking what I download and charging me for it? The story sounds a little vague on the details, but an alliance between software, hardware, and bandwidth providers only points to one thing: control of what end users do online.

    Encryption to the rescue (I hope)!
  • Yeah, this is exactly what the industry needs: price controls and mandatory redistribution of wealth according to government policy. That has just worked so very well in the past.

    Anything is better than a this proposed tax and commercial welfare system. Well, except perhaps outlawing general purpose computers and network equipment (such as by mandating universal DRM).

    • Re:Yay for communism! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by zurab ( 188064 )
      Yeah, this is exactly what the industry needs: price controls and mandatory redistribution of wealth according to government policy. That has just worked so very well in the past.

      Yeah, but it is a little bit late to post this since that's how RIAA is taxing everyone's purchases of items such as CD burners, blank CDs, tapes, etc. I guess the proposition in the article would create a similar taxation system by "artists".

      I agree that this is wrong since you cannot charge everyone their adequate share of downloaded or shared music; much less distribute the money fairly to these "artists". But what's wrong here is the principle, not the plan.

      Since the principle says people who share or download have to pay somehow no matter what. While it is true that if you are hosting several terabytes of copyrighted content solely for the purposes of redistribution and financial gain can be considered stealing, I do not think running a Gnutella client casually comes to anything close to it. Just because the distribution is cheaper due to improvements in technology does not validate the older distributors' right to their old distribution model.

      Courts have said that size and quantity matters when distributing or setting up a system that eases distribution of copyrighted content. So while Napster was found to be out of bounds, again, casual sharing will not. And, in general, the numbers have so far shown that casual sharing does promote the industry growth, innovation, and other good things.

      Labeling this activity as pirating or stealing is just a dumbfounded response from "old guys". And asking for the legislation to require copy-protected hardware everywhere will do nothing but stall the industry.

      So, the solution is for RIAA and MPAA to stop pointing fingers and lobbying for legislation, only go after blatant copyright violators. It will benefit them in the short and mid term by raising their revenues and profits while they rip off the "artists". In the long term, please solve the distribution problem that will be antiquated pretty soon. That means offer *more* at a lower cost, not the other way around, like they want to at present.
  • This is not about the RIAA.

    This is not about the RIAA.

    Repeat, ad nauseuem.

    The only people I wish to benefit from listening to (say) Radiohead are... Radiohead.

    Sure, they will have financial backers. But the the 'closed shop' where the RIAA acts as toll-keeper on music is repellent.

    Please, please, please can the RIAA put its head back in the sand and shut up.
  • Since kazaa probably has the means to monitor which songs get shared how often, they "could" pay the artists according to sharing popularity. Remains to be seen if they would though.
  • KaZaA is proposing one dollar per user as a fee, which is very reasonable, and will apparently generate 2 billion annually -- but where is KaZaA getting that kind of money? Advertising revenues? Don't make me laugh.

  • Consider the consequences (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Agar ( 105254 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @06:57PM (#3521029)
    This may be a great idea, but there are definite consequences.

    The proposal is similar to what's being done with the blank audio cassette levy in the US (see Title 17, section 1004 [cornell.edu]) and the Canadian CD-R Levy (see this random link I found on Google [neil.eton.ca]).

    But the question is: how does the collected money get back to the artists? There are two ways:

    1. Use the BMI or ASCAP system that already exists to pay artists for music rebroadcast.
    Of course, this has problems of its own (see ASCAP & BMI -- Protectors of Artists or Shadowy Thieves? [woodpecker.com]). This is unlikely, because the sampling method used to dole out royalties is even less valid for the Internet than it is for rebroadcast and live performances. Additionally, it's unnecessary because they could just...

    2. Track actual downloads from the Internet.
    Think about it -- to accurately divide a >$2B pie will take a very thorough analysis to get all parties comfortable. It's easy to legislate: either all download sites or sharing systems aggregate their download data in a central database or they will be considered illegally supporting piracy. IMHO this will very shortly be a part of the proposal.

    Note that this could use unique IDs, assuring that your actual music listening habits won't be tracked, etc. But do you really believe this will happen, when there's yet another advertising vector to exploit? Think about the metadata that could be gained from this data...the licensing opportunities...the marketing...the potential for privacy intrusion....

    Who would control this big usage database in the sky? Who would you trust?
  • According to Chip.de [www.chip.de] Sonys copy protection technology could be bypassed altogether by just a Permanant Marker. Apparently the bad data that copy rights the CD is on the outer edge of the CD and blacking the final track appears to completely remove the restriction.
  • Once again, we find ourselves faced with a large company with far too much power for it's own good (AOL-Time Warner, anyone?), since it seems ovbious that the RIAA will fight this. Yet, this time we're not faced with the Big Bad Wolf. As said by perdida, they're not completely bad. They help artists keep a good hold on what's theirs (though in some cases, this is questionable *cough* LimpBizkit *cough, hack, gag*) and they're paid for their work. However, it isn't right for them to keep a hold on the music industry the way they have been. They keep their hands around money that should go to the artists we care about, money that could be used for new equipment or just building a third pool (depending on your imcome ^_-). Yes, the RIAA deserves this. But, something should be done to make sure they're not left completely out of the circle as well. So, what then? Do we continue allowing them to keep too much power? Or, potentially lose their services?

  • Utter garbage. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by RatBastard ( 949 )
    This proposal is utter garbage. It is simply a way to try to legitamiize (sp?) themselves and make a lot of money. It is no more fair than the current system, and may actually be worse. And there are issues I just don't like:
    1. Who distributes the money?
    2. With a flat fee artists whose work is popular, and therefor downloaded by more people, will not be compensated any more than an artist whose music stinks.
    3. A tax on DC-Rs? Of all the CDs I've ever burned, only six have contained music.
    4. A $1.00 "tax" added to my Internet access bill. Okay. Not a bad thing. But wait! What about a $1.00 fee for writers whose books are downloaded? And a $1.00 fee for porn that is downloaded? And what about a $1.00 fee for ... Pretty soon you get a LOT of fees.
    5. And speaking of fees, why should I pay for services I don't use? Why should you?
    I don't like it.

  • Hilary Rosen can suck my knob. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by crovira ( 10242 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @07:11PM (#3521129) Homepage
    I'm an ex-musician and, in case you con't guess, I HATE the parasite, dog-scum, suckin' xxAAs with a passion.

    Jack Valenti and Hilary Rosen can find a nice place in Hell and burn there in agony for all eternity like the creativity deprived fuck-wited Luddites they are.

    God. Just thinking about 'em makes me reach for Piperazine.

  • GNU and DAT (Score:4, Interesting)

    by akb ( 39826 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @07:32PM (#3521243)
    Who remembers the DAT tax? Before doing digital audio on computers was made practical by mp3 and cd-r there was DAT. And the music industry clamped down hard to prevent it from becoming a consumer product. So they got a tax placed on DAT media and devices and had a chip implanted in every DAT device to prevent copying.

    Thought it was relevant to this, but didn't think the slashdotters would let me do a feature ;)

    Anyhoo, here's some reference links

    The right way to tax dat [gnu.org] by RMS

    Phillip Greenspun [greenspun.com] comments and gave testimony before the Senate.

    What happens [copyright.gov] to the money that the Library of Congress collects.
  • if not worse, and we'd just be trading one set of ignorant asslickers for another. Kazaa has shown such great business acumin with brilliant digital. I'd not trust them to steal from me let alone provide a service I would pay for even if it was decent.
  • It occurred to me that not ALL people download music. Moreover, not ALL people listen to music in the first place. There are people who are deaf.

    Now they will be made to pay for downloading music that they never download nor ever listen????

  • I've got a brilliant corollary (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    (The first of two comments.)

    There's rampant piracy of software on the 'net, too. So, how about we place a modest fee on everyone's Internet service account, to license all of the software for everyone. The money raised would be distributed amongst the commercial software vendors. Then, downloading any software will be legal.

    Just a guess, but the average American on the net probably downloads, buys, or upgrades maybe $10 a month worth of software. That would be a reasonable fee.


    Give me a break.

    This is ludicrous. This is wrong on so many levels that I fear enumerating them, since I won't even come close to a complete list!

    The chief problem:
    I don't use commercial software, nor do I pirate it!!! There's no way in hell I would allow myself to be subjected to such a tax!

    The proposal from Kazaa and Verizon is dumb for exactly the same reasons. In analogy to the example above, I don't download illegal copies of music!

  • Hell No... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by micq ( 266015 )
    Kazaa lobbyist Phil Corwin says a $1-a-month fee per user on Internet providers alone (it's unclear whether costs would be passed along to subscribers) would generate $2 billion yearly: "We're talking about a modest fee on all the parties who benefit from the availability of this content."

    It would be passed on to the consumer, it would be inflated by the ISP's due to handling costs and the increase in bandwidth being used.

    On top of it, I don't find file-sharing all that damn great of a service. If I want to hear music, I'll turn on the radio, or download some indie stuff. If I want to buy it, I'll buy it. I don't want to pay artists like Britney Spears for her bubble-gum pop, or anybody else for that matter, if I'm not going to listen to it.

    "So it's only a buck?"... You can buy alot with a buck. :) On top of it, where are all of you /.'ers that advocate a voice with your money? Give up a dollar a month for stuff you don't even use, and how are they going to distribute it? Does Britney get a bigger share because she's a top seller? What about the little guys? Where's your voice now?

    Geez... Why don't we all just pay a portion of our paycheck to a system where people get to stay home and not work and get paid.... oh, wait...

  • Compulsory licensing yes, compulsory payment no (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2002 @12:38AM (#3521997) Homepage
    Compulsory licensing, where the copyright holder has to license on statutory terms, is reasonable. But taxing the Internet to support the music industry is not. It's important to distinguish between the two.

  • "MONETIZING"??!!!?? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by EnglishTim ( 9662 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2002 @02:31AM (#3522283)
    But Guerinot isn't ready to dismiss it out of hand: "Any model that starts to accommodate monetizing the artists is worth looking into."

    MONETIZING!?

    What the hell is wrong with 'paying'? Why is it that buisiness community has to constantly make up stupid longer words to use instead of already existing ones?

    It's not big, and it's not clever.

    Don't say 'leverage' when you mean 'lever'.
    Don't say 'burglarized' when you mean 'burgled'
    Don't say 'monetized' when you mean 'paid'

    Really, it's not that difficult...

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