Stars Call for 'Gadget Levy' To Fund UK Creatives (bbc.com) 97
Olivia Colman, John Nettles and Joanne Harris are among dozens of high-profile artists calling for a portion of gadget sales revenue in the UK to go into a fund for performers and creators. From a report: In a letter in Tuesday's Times newspaper, they claim a centralised "Smart Fund" could generate up to $415m per year for the UK's creative sector. The levy would be between 1% and 3% of the overall price of a device. However, critics say it would amount to "a new tax" on consumers. It would apply to everything that can "store and download creative content."
This includes laptops, PCs and smartphones, said a group of artist industry organisations behind the idea. There are no official proposals for such a scheme, but the artist Yinka Shonibare described it as "a no-brainer. " "Currently there isn't any effective way for creators to be recompensed when their work is downloaded and stored by audiences," he said. However, Tech UK, a network for the country's tech sector, said it sounded like a "new tax" on consumers. "It is an arbitrary tax on consumers that is hugely bureaucratic to manage, and with no transparency on how funds are disbursed and spent," said a spokeswoman.
This includes laptops, PCs and smartphones, said a group of artist industry organisations behind the idea. There are no official proposals for such a scheme, but the artist Yinka Shonibare described it as "a no-brainer. " "Currently there isn't any effective way for creators to be recompensed when their work is downloaded and stored by audiences," he said. However, Tech UK, a network for the country's tech sector, said it sounded like a "new tax" on consumers. "It is an arbitrary tax on consumers that is hugely bureaucratic to manage, and with no transparency on how funds are disbursed and spent," said a spokeswoman.
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Call it what it is (Score:2, Insightful)
Rent-seeking by artists.
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Like the BS in Canada... 'the artists' were worried that someone *may* copy their work, so they enacted a law whereby they get a cut of all recording materials... cassette tapes, CD-R, DVD-R, etc.
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Like the BS in Canada... 'the artists' were worried that someone *may* copy their work, so they enacted a law whereby they get a cut of all recording materials... cassette tapes, CD-R, DVD-R, etc.
Not DVD-R as after they put the levy on audio recording mediums, the courts ruled that since we paid the levy, we can record music for personal use so now ripping CD's and such, even if you don't own them, for yourself is legal. This stopped them from pushing for a DVD-R levy.
Besides, it was the publishers who pushed for the levy, not the artists who didn't get anything for a long time. Good old AA* acounting where whatever is left after the hookers, blow and yacht goes to the artist.
Perhaps the UK courts w
Re:Call it what it is (Score:4, Insightful)
Rent-seeking by artists.
Whoever calculates and imposes this fee is going to have to define exactly who belongs in the cohort "artists" - a question that artists themselves have never been able to answer.
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They just need to define it as membership in some professional association. Either an existing one, or one established for the purpose. Then they can make sure only 'real' artists get in, the ones with respectable connections.
Or maybe. . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
. . .these "stars and creators" could produce something that people are willing to pay for ?
I know, I know, that's crazy talk. . . .
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Re: Or maybe. . . . (Score:2)
Internet = infinate supply (Score:2)
The first thing we are taught in High School Economics is Supply and Demand curve. Where the price will normally fall where the Supply and Demand meet.
The internet gives us an infinite supply (well large enough for surplus on our fixed demand level) What makes it worse, we often have alternatives for everything too.
So the natural price for information is 0.
Now we have a problem, to create and generate this information requires access to resources where the supply is not 0. So it is going to cost them to c
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The value of information is not 0 as many people value new content and are prepared to pay more than 0 for it, as evidenced by the likes of particularly Amazon and Netflix who charge money for content, make a lot of money charging for it, and also create a lot of content. What is true, is that once created, the marginal cost for creating a new copy is low, although not zero. It is also true that the value different people place on content is different, but that's always been true, but enough people want new
One or Other, Not Both (Score:2)
Or people could stop stealing their stuff in the name of "information is free" bullshit
Fine, but in that case then we should repeal copyright and allow anyone to copy any content. The sole point of copyright is to ensure that content creators can be compensated for their content - and this should apply to authors of apps as well, not just music etc. If they want to suggest that a better system is a tax on devices _instead_ of copyright then fine, let's discuss. But it is not at all reasonable to expect people to buy their content AND also pay a tax to them: that's paying twice for the same t
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Actually, the point of copyright was to encourage learning by expanding the public domain. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Rereading it, the article has expanded and become more interesting, I don't remember a reference to John Locke last reading.
Yes, the 14 year term seems about right, I would even compromise for more extensions being added as long as an effort had to be made. There are a lot of works tied up in copyright that aren't profitable and should be in the public domain.
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This doesn't work for everything, but physical framed prints of photos, drawings of paintings would be a start.
Make something that is good enough to where you'd want to hang it on your limited wall space.
Quit making disposable art....like how much of today's music is.
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With music they gotta sell tickets, not records. The records are supposed to promote the live shows coming to town
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With music they gotta sell tickets, not records. The records are supposed to promote the live shows coming to town
You can blame The Beatles for ruining that mentality.
Of course, for the last 16 months or so, they couldn't really sell tickets.
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The trouble is...so many of them don't have a show worth seeing...they don't/can't play any instruments and can't sing without auto tune....
I mean, I just can't see spending a lot of $$ to see someone lip sync and dance around with a bunch of background dancers.
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Or, maybe specialize in works of art that cannot be digitized?
Many already do, but it's been harder to sell tickets for music events or plays, for example, during a pandemic. For some, government support didn't necessarily reach them in the same way as furlough did, so the creative industry and the people that work in it have taken a hit.
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Or you know maybe do concerts, have live events which you go to, paint physical paintings and sell them, know do actual work, to make your money not produce an item and expect to get paid for it the rest of your life. and 75 years after you die. This tax will not do anything to encourage artist, companies will immediately put it into every contract that they own the rights that money.
What we need to do is reduce the cost and barriers of entry of producing these creative works, why does it cost so much to c
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Only if the content ultimately ends up in the public domain, but with the current copyright system that won't happen until long after we are all dead and the content is long forgotten.
That's rather arbitrary and not useful... (Score:3)
It's basically a highway to the "Ow! My Balls!" 24/7/366 culture.
On the other hand, they are from the UK and there's a much simpler solution to their problem.
Tax the nobility and the royals. Also, the church. Keep taxing them until there are none left.
Then go full Meslier and hang one by the intestines of the other. [ffrf.org]
So many problems would be solved that way.
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. . .these "stars and creators" could produce something that people are willing to pay for ?
I know, I know, that's crazy talk. . . .
I'm willing to pay for it, just not as much they want, most of it is crap and often looks like they only half heartedly did the job just for the money. realistically I can wait till its on free to air
Would you pay a trade who did a poor job for e.g. painting or remodelling a kitchen?
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Well.... there's such a thing as a Mechanic's Lien [wikipedia.org] where the contractor has an interest in the property until paid. But I suspect the remedy there is a Breach of Contract action in your local court system.
What bugs me, are the movies and such out there that look amazing in the preview. . .and are actual crap in toto (which seems to be most movies these days) And it's why, with few exceptions, I never go see a movie or buy an album (I know, dating myself here) until I start seeing reviews. . . .
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No... Art is for art's sake. If the public is not sophisticated enough to understand that.. then they should be subject to a new tax to learn.
If their "art" is so crappy... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Remuneration of creative arts is not determined by how "crappy" something is in any normal way. In fact it's almost inversely to the way you expect. Crappy junk can be mass produced, copied, and sold to masses. It's the unique one-offs that require serious talent and work that price themselves out of a market which can't afford to appreciate art.
As for "I thought they did it for the love". You can't eat love, nor does the landlord accept love as payment outside of a few porno films.
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Remuneration of creative arts is not determined by how "crappy" something is in any normal way. In fact it's almost inversely to the way you expect. Crappy junk can be mass produced, copied, and sold to masses. It's the unique one-offs that require serious talent and work that price themselves out of a market which can't afford to appreciate art.
Sorry, but society should not be on the hook to pay for artsy content that it largely does not care to partake in. If you can't find a market or patron to support your creation then frankly it doesn't need to be made.
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I didn't say it should. I just said that crappy is not the reason artists don't make money. It's the fact that people don't give a shit anymore.
Ok so the creators (Score:3)
My Fist is art, how do I claim my free money? (Score:2)
Nothing is free. Just because it is good for you does not mean the one-sided power of the Government should be used to enforce that on everyone.
If this went thru, the explosion of crappy 'art' so that 'artists' can get a cut of the free-tax-money will astronomically dwarf all 'art' ever created before.
Isn't everyone an artist?
Isn't everyone a scientist?
Isn't everyone an expert?
How about no? (Score:5, Insightful)
You aren't owed a paycheck. If you can't figure out how to monetize your labor, then maybe the labor doesn't have any value to begin with.
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Your second sentence is not strictly true. As a society we take a lot of things for granted for which we would not pay money directly but which would otherwise seriously be missed if it disappeared. One of the biggest problems in the creative arts world is not that there's no value in creative arts, but rather that there's no rational flow of money related to the quality or size of one's production.
The people who make money are those who can mass produce copies of their work for sale. That doesn't mean I w
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Art galleries usually charge an admission fee (or at a minimum request a donation). If that cannot fund the creation of the works in that gallery, and no rich patron wishes to fund those works, then obviously the public doesn't care THAT much about them. Hell the vast majority of the public doesn't care to go to an art gallery in the first place and should not be taxed to fund things that they have absolutely zero interest in.
People pay for what they like, and artists who make what the public likes make b
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Indeed they do. But would you be willing to spend $100s of dollars to see a Marvel movie in the only cinema which shows it? Heck when was the last time you went to a nickelback concert? I suspect you remunerate both motion picture and music artists far more than going to see them live in the flesh in a single production which moves around from point to point.
Which is exactly my point. Creative Arts suffers a problem. It isn't mass copied and available to all for cheap. It's available to few select people at
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When the levy breaks (Score:2)
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Going....going to Chicago
Another rort (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, so they'd collect all this money into a huge fund and then allocate it how?
You can pretty much guarantee it'd become yet another "old boys club" where those with the right connections got the lion's share of the money and those who really needed/deserved it most got piss-all. That's inevitably how these things work.
Didn't Canada and Germany have some kind of media tax on any form of recordable media capable of holding music or movies or something a few years back? How did that work out? How many "artists" got a single red cent of the money collected through these taxes.
I've been "creating" content online since 1995 and I don't believe I'm *owed* anything. Why should others be any different?
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Re: Another rort (Score:2)
It'll either go to big publishers or will be allocated by a government body directed to allocate money to 'diverse' artists.
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You can pretty much guarantee it'd become yet another "old boys club" where those with the right connections got the lion's share of the money and those who really needed/deserved it most got piss-all. That's inevitably how these things work.
It depends. Back in olden times (1970s to early 1990s) a lot of the money was distributed by the Arts Council that funded a lot of pretty radical stuff that certainly wasn't part of the 'old boys' club' of the period. The fact that a lot of it was radical and often of variable quality led to it being satirised quite heavily in comedy shows (e.g. Not the Nine O'Clock News and others). Other money has gone to things like the English National Opera, Royal Shakespeare Company and others too, and to various nati
Canada Tape Tax (Score:2)
Didn't Canada and Germany have some kind of media tax on any form of recordable media capable of holding music or movies or something a few years back?
Yes, in Canada we used to have a tax on blank tapes (extended to CD-RWs etc later) to compensate artists for lost revenue due to copying BUT the law was balanced by the fact that it was made legal to make personal copies of such content i.e. you could not sell copies etc. but if two friends made a copy that was fine. As you can imagine the music industry were not too happy with their own law when internet sharing became big. They toyed with the idea of a tax on devices and even hard drives to replace the t
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There was another issue with the recordable media levy in Canada: it went to the most prosperous canadian artists. It didn't go to the people whos music was copied the most, which is likely non-Canadians.
So, Celine Dion and Bryan Adams were getting a cut, but not Metallica or AC/DC.
Private tax on media (Score:2)
Back in the day when music was distr
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I happen to be an amateur photographer, and have some 35K pictures stored on my hard drives, that I have bought over the years. And for every hard drive I buy, Swedish artists/composers get some of my money. Why should others (other than those involved in manufacturing, transporting and selling the HD) profit from me desire to not loose any pictures? And the same can be asked about anybody who made backup copies of their own writing: when they buy a USB memory to make copies of it, some of the price they pay goes to Swedish artists/composers, who have nothing to do with the writing!
The key would be to find out how to get a cut of the gravy train. If you can't beat them, join them.
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Awesome. So this means you can copy any music you want, because it's already been paid for, right?
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Further, there is some limit that I can't remember about what kind of source you are allowed to copy. I may be wrong, but I think that you are not allowed to copy
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Right. That's the problem with these kinds of laws. Canada had this too for a number of years. They are well-intentioned but not well thought out.
Smeg Off (Score:1)
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Hint: Don't become an artist if you like money (Score:2)
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Please keep in mind, dear programmer friends, that the work of some of your colleagues is responsible for stealing artists revenues. Even though Grooveshark is long dead, Spotify, YouTube and others are not paying the amount they should be paying to musicians.
The problem is, who defines what artists get a cut? More than likely, the big names in the business will get the lions share, Spotify will cut rates because, well, you're already getting paid from the device purchases, and the small indies will once again get screwed.
As for stealing revenue, shouldn't developers get a cut of devices that can produce art, since no doubt some artists run pirated copies of software instead of buying it?
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Sofa Tax (Score:2)
Because traditionally people park their fat ass on the couch to consume the content.
Why should people buying devices be responsible for your profitability.
Perspective (Score:3)
Pre-internet, if an artist wanted to sell directly to consumers, they'd have to front capital for printing T-shirts, or making physical paintings or drawings. You'd have to sell through galleries, or rent booths at art fairs, or rent space in an artist's co-op. If you were lucky, maybe a magazine or newspaper would provide some free advertising, otherwise you'd have to hustle to promote yourself, and incur all of the costs yourself, as well.
Now, you can spin up an on-line on-demand art store for almost nothing. Social media makes it relatively simple and cheap to promote yourself to nearly everyone in the world. Not to mention online forums, picture sharing sites, etc... A few hundred dollars for a decent printer and you can sell prints directly, too.
Apparently, all of that cost cutting and middle-man elimination isn't enough?
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Free Content? (Score:5, Insightful)
In a letter in Tuesday's Times newspaper, they claim a centralised "Smart Fund" could generate up to $415m per year for the UK's creative sector. The levy would be between 1% and 3% of the overall price of a device. However, critics say it would amount to "a new tax" on consumers. It would apply to everything that can "store and download creative content." .
If every consumer is levied a 1% to 3% tax on each device they purchase, does that mean they can then freely download any content they want without paying anything for it since the device tax is compensation the artist for it?
Television License (Score:2)
Doesn't the BBC already collect a 'tax' for watching TV? Why would they need another?
Alternatively, collectivise and start your own production company so the profits stay in the UK rather than flowing back to multinational corporations.
How about the stars pay for that levy? (Score:2)
Since reasonably, the cost of enforcing a copyright should fall onto the copyright holder unless they have a meritous claim of infringement against a particular person, it seems to me that the people who are wanting this levy should have to pay for it.
And reasonably, they should be entitled to get it back from the infringers that they successfully sue.
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Law is very expensive, so that approach means only those with the resources could access copyright. You rip off a Disney film, they sue you.You rip off my (crappy) artwork, what am I to do? Spend thousands of pounds on a solicitor? Tens of thousands if you're overseas.
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Leaving aside the matter that this is by and large how things are even without the levy, you do exactly what you would already do if there were no levy at all... you sue them for copyright infringement.
But if you didn't contribute funds towards the levy, then you won't be entitled to any compensation of it. This would not diminish the compensation you may be entitled simply by virtue of copyright infringement, however.
If you can't afford to sue the
No-Brainer (Score:2)
A term used to describe a proposal which was thought up without the use of one's brain.
Why 1-3%? (Score:2)
Why not 10%? Or 30%. Heck, why not 90%?
After all, the hard drive I store my local git repositories on have to be taxed for the benefit of Yinka Shonibare.
Who over the age of 13 (Score:2)
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I mean, I did it well into my early 20's, but your point is valid. People tend to pirate stuff because they're broke. Through high school and college I pirated pretty much all my music, video games, and movies because I was working part time and making like $75 per week. They don't have the money to spend anyways so most piracy is not lost revenue - it's revenue that you were never going to get anyways. This was also compounded by the fact that back in those days the music industry wouldn't even let you
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Fuck em (Score:1)
And why do we need to hear from these people ? (Score:1)
Sod off You Criminals (Score:1)
Won't someone please ... (Score:2)
It *is* a new tax (Score:2)
However, critics say it would amount to "a new tax" on consumers
It wouldn't "amount" to a new tax, it *is* a new tax.
But if they are going to decriminalize piracy and let people download any content without penalty as long as it's played on a taxed device, I could get behind that tax. Of course, that's not the plan - they want their cake and to eat it too.
Hey, letâ(TM)s tax the artists (Score:1)
"Stars" (Score:2)
"Stars" don't need their work subsidized. Failed artists might, though...
No (Score:2)
UK copyright generally runs for 70 years. If you can't turn a profit in 70 years then try another line of work. Or just be honest in asking for free money so you can continue farting around like a child.
I have a better idea. (Score:2)
TV tax (Score:1)
ah yes, the old TV tax, and radio tax. That's how you fund a monocultural, government-controlled entertainment industry. No thanks.
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oh the irony of your username
France does that (Score:2)
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Rent-seeking (Score:3)
A "tax" suggests some version of everybody, such as healthcare for pregnant women, or free schools for children, benefits. Demanding a pay-cheque from the labour of others is old-fashioned socialism, or worse, rent-seeking.
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A "tax" suggests some version of everybody, such as healthcare for pregnant women, or free schools for children, benefits. Demanding a pay-cheque from the labour of others is old-fashioned socialism, or worse, rent-seeking.
Whilst you're right that it is rent seeking, it's not socialism. Socialism would be having all artists paid the same as delivery workers which will be paid the same as engineers (under a proper Marxist system, no-one would be paid at all). This isn't about owning their means of production (capitalism has seen to making that impossible with copyright laws)
Rent seeking, having a tax levied for your private benefit, is very much a capitalist idea.
Whilst we're on the subject, socialism isn't "anything pai
How about a levy on artists (Score:2)
Tp pay to open source software developers to help fund the work on software that their promotion companies are using on their servers. It's been long enough that artists get rich on the backs of software developers.