Why not make the five bucks a levy on what you pay your ISP every month, kind of like the levy they put on blank CDs a few years back for much the same reason?
I remember a decade or so ago when the blank media levy was introduced and made the cost of a spindle of CDs double at the till. Sure, I guess people are buying less blank media and are putting it on their iPods (that no longer are subject to the blank media levy) when they steal the music from the internets. But that plan didn't hold up so well and now they want to give Shaw a reason to charge me $5 a month more. Great.
I agree with StewieGriffin, that the single track downloads are probably altering the numbers of the industry loss.
Until the new generation of kids realize that music has value and is more than just a fleeting digital fire ripe for deleting in eight months this problem is going to persist. I don't think there's any way to teach value or shut down file sharing so this is how it's going to be. Maybe musicians could stop recording music for a year as punishment, just do live shows.
Until the new generation of kids realize that music has value and is more than just a fleeting digital fire ripe for deleting in eight months this problem is going to persist. I don't think there's any way to teach value or shut down file sharing so this is how it's going to be. Maybe musicians could stop recording music for a year as punishment, just do live shows.
Some punishment. For the most part, today's music sucks.
Some punishment. For the most part, today's music sucks.
Right, but for the seventeen emo kids who are upset that the new City & Colour or Rise Against or whoever album isn't going to come out for a year because they downloaded their faces off it might send a message.
When I was a kid if I did something bad my parents punished me. Not in line with the RIAA suing Jane Doe for $37,000 because she downloaded one song, but something to show me what I did was wrong.
A $5 internet tax - for the most part - is going to "punish" the wrong people. A lot of my adult friends understand that artists make music and need the 15 cents they make off CD sales and will buy a disc or pick up the single on iTunes. Most people I know had their downloading heyday in their teens and who's picking up the tab on the internet then? The parents.
Maybe the labels need to take a lesson and stop being greedy pigs. Rework the cost of an album so the musician actually gets a decent cut and we don't pay such absurd amounts for marketing and advertising. Maybe if downloaders understood that $8 of the $12 a CD cost went to the artist they'd throw it down and pick up the CD not the isohunt special.
Something's gotta change and it's not going to be bit torrent.
I've always been entertained by this concept that if people are taping movies, downloading music, hijacking cable and satillite feeds, and generally contravening copyright, it costs the applicable industry the amount of dollars that an otherwise legal acquisition would bring them. This is simply actuarial prognostication existing in a theoretical universe. Truth is it isn't really "costing" anything. That is because (and I know I'm going out on a limb here) the folks who are doing the deed wouldn't have bought the service and/or product anyway. That's why they are stealing them. (I mean, if someone steals your car, it is not like they would have otherwise been receptive to a reeeely good offer!) It's not like shoplifting, because in that case there isat least a physical product with a hard cost that might otherwise have been individually sold. (And yeah, I know that the cost of retail items includes the cost of such illegal acts, and I'm not sure I like that either, but it is, I suppose, inevitable... a cost of doing business... but at least there IS a "hard" cost rationale.) But, Actuaries live in a world of theoretical cost-accounting. 'Frinstrance... when a number-cruncher says it costs x dollars to conduct a raid on a crack house, for example, those costs include a whole bunch of costs that wouldn't have been saved even if the raid never happened. Cops would still be paid even if they were sitting in their cars, fuel would be spent on patrol anyway, and the courts would carry on. When the Navy conducts a rescue for some idiot who sailed his dingy across the track of a freighter the "cost" includes ALL routine coexisting fixed costs, unlkess there might be some overtime. The crunchers are simply "apportioning" costs that are routinely incurred elsewhere anyway, and therefore, rather than "saved" would have to be applied elsewhere. So if Joey steals a song, it is value that would have been unrealized in any case. See, Joey never intended to pay in the first place - the thief wouldn't have otherwise bought. But, universal guilt is such a wonderfully Canadian (western?) concept that it seems exceedingly reasonable that I (with a total lack of culpability) should pay instead for the sins of others. Perhaps that, after all, is what civilization is about. He ain't heavy, you see, that bloody little thief, is my brother. Sigh!
Some punishment. For the most part, today's music sucks.
yikes. I am sorry for you TV on the Radio. Music has NEVER been better.
I'd really have no problem paying $5 for the all music I could download... you of course are right on the economics... if I could go to a website like iTunes and easily, safely, and quickly discover and download what I want.
I don't want to pay $5 so I can have the priviledge of going onto some lame and disorganized bit-torrent site and find inferior quality songs.
If ISPs wanted to, they could figure who is downloading a ton of music... but if they had to be the cops... a lot of people wouldn't have high speed internet anymore.
From what I am reading and gathering from the music industry, they ARE getting a handle on things. So I am not too worried about rock stars and record execs. Bands give their own music away for free as a loss leader to sell concert tickets and t-shirts... not different then getting a free movie ticket to sign up for a VISA.
*** and sorry to pick on Johnny Bagpipes, I forgot he is a real dude, I just made up a name but then remembered I saw him at a golf course in Victoria and he is amazing.
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