$5 web fee would pay for 'illegal' music files
  
VITO PILIECI
Canwest News Service
Thursday, February 21, 2008


The Songwriters Association of Canada will reveal a proposal today that would see every Canadian's monthly Internet bill increase by $5 in exchange for the ability to download as many "illegal" music files as they choose.

The association says its proposal, which would require federal approval, would wipe out the need for music-selling websites such as iTunes.ca and PureTracks.ca, making it legal for one person to share a music CD with as many people as they wish, and as many times as they wish.

"That's a very reasonable amount of money to [download music] legally, without fear of any legal repercussions," said Eddie Schwartz, president of the songwriters association.

The organization, a lobby group that represents Canada's music composers and lyricists, is demanding an immediate amendment to the Canadian Copyright Act that would establish a new right, called the Right to Equitable Remuneration for Music File Sharing, to allow the $5 fee.

Schwartz said the proposal was created at the request of federal politicians who are reviewing Canada's Copyright Act. The proposed fees could see the songwriters group collect between $500 million and $900 million annually from Canadian Internet subscribers.

Sales of music in Canada were $704 million in 2006, the most recent year that sales data has been made available, a far cry from the $1.3 billion reported during the industry's peak sales year in 1999.

Yet it's unclear how much damage illegal downloads actually cause, as the music industry's own figures suggest that Canadian artists may be losing only as much as $118.8 million a year.

http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=475f6ad0-13d1-4e5c-b1e0-2da63b8ba73a

I'm over charged for cable now. I don't down load, I'm old school, I buy the cd and put it in that slit in my dash.

Pardon my poor gramer- but ........F**K them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!- I refuse to pay more for internet so others can be paid for their losses.   I do not steal music.  If I want it, I will take my $5.00 and pay for it.  If I am forced to pay the $5.00 I will go out of my way to ensure I start stealing and re-selling and profiting from as much illegal music, video or  satillite, as I can.

Perhaps they should invest in the technology which will help prevent the theft of music.   I refuse to pay $5.00 to enter a Walmart, because they have a shoplifting problem.

Pissed Off with High Blood Pressure.

Quoted from Brushy Ridge

Pardon my poor gramer- but ........F**K them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!- I refuse to pay more for internet so others can be paid for their losses.   I do not steal music.  If I want it, I will take my $5.00 and pay for it.  If I am forced to pay the $5.00 I will go out of my way to ensure I start stealing and re-selling and profiting from as much illegal music, video or  satillite, as I can.

Perhaps they should invest in the technology which will help prevent the theft of music.   I refuse to pay $5.00 to enter a Walmart, because they have a shoplifting problem.

Pissed Off with High Blood Pressure.

Butch up, Buttercup - it's not like it's $50 per month or anything...it's five freakin' dollars...

Quoted from 99

Butch up, Buttercup - it's not like it's $50 per month or anything...it's five freakin' dollars...

exactly, its $5 a month!  That is one more Starbucks or pint I have to do without as a penalty because *other* people download and don't pay.

I currently pay for my downloads off iTunes, I will refuse to pay this tax.

my 99 cents goes to the artist I download not to some slush fun in Ottawa because Johnny Bagpipes is not getting paid enough.

Quoted from Brushy Ridge

If I am forced to pay the $5.00 I will go out of my way to ensure I start stealing and re-selling and profiting from as much illegal music, video or  satillite, as I can.

I'm sure that somewhere, the likes of Rosa Parks, Ghandi and William Wallace are smiling upon you and wishing you well. Your courageous stand against hated oppressors like Wintersleep and State Of Shock are an inspiration to us all. In fact, when your fight is done - and it could take decades - I'd like to invite you for a celebratory small-sized popcorn shrimp platter at TGI Fridays.

It'll have to be your treat, though, because I'm going to be crippled financially if I'm forced to cough up an extra fin for my cable box.

Is it April 1st?  They can't be serious.

Quoted from Flamethrower

...not to some slush fun in Ottawa because Johnny Bagpipes is not getting paid enough.

Leave Johnny Bagpipes outta this!

Quoted from Glen Quagmire

Is it April 1st?  They can't be serious.


Leave Johnny Bagpipes outta this!

Hey, I saw that guy at a VAncouver comedy club a few years ago.  He's funny.  As for the 5 bucks, anyone who is saying "it's only 5 bucks, lighten up" is obviously someone who is downloading a ton more then that every month.  I don't download now, am pizzed off that the cable companies have an essential monopoly in our country and now they want to jack my rates 5 bucks because the archaic structure of the music industry is too stupid to slow down the download process.  I'd also like to see an independant audit to find out exactly how much the music industry is being crippled. I honestly believe that the emergence of more independant music artists are tapping into the sales of the big labels as much as the downloaders are.  The big labels are also making more cash per download than they would off CD sales based on the CD needing packaging, shipping, stocking, printing etc.  The download works out to the same price for an entire disc (approximately) without all those other expenses.  The margin the record labels are working with now are great than they've ever been.

Great idea...but I think the ISP's are the ones who should really pay.
They're the ones allowing the illegal downloading...make them pay $5 on every account.
However, I think the whole business needs a new model.
And movie studios are only just beginning to feel that reality...wait until downloading speeds multiply and it takes only a few seconds to download a newly released movie.

Something has to happen somewhere.

$5 is definitely too high. If this ever happens it will probably end up less than two bucks on internet bills and the possibly a increase in blank CD/DVD copyright levies

Wouldn't it make more sense to charge according to how much music someone actually illegally downloads?  The technology has got to be out there to do this.

I know people who NEVER download any music, I know people that download 1-2 songs a month. Then there's people that download hundreds and hundreds of songs per month - Make them pay a higher fee!!!!!!!

Just also want to add I think a big reason the music industry has lost money over the years is because a lot of people aren't buying an entire cd anymore, they're just buying a few songs from a particular artist.  10 years ago you dished out $13 for a cd.  Now if you want just 2-3 songs, that would only cost you $3.  makes sense no?  

Pay your 5 bucks a month and then sharing files on the internet is free from prosecution and legal - five bucks gets you all the songs you want - this versus a buck a song at iTunes...

Simple economics - do the math.

As it stands right now, in Canada it's not illegal to share music files on-line, but it is in the Excited States.

Besides - you really think that 100% of the money you pay on i-Tunes goes to the artist?  Apple already has enough money methinks...

Yeah ok....It's five freaking dollars, but for someone like me that only downloads 1-2 songs a month, it's bulls**t.  Excuse my language.

It's a bigger shame for those that occasionally surf the net and check there email once or twice a month.

This is a ridiculous idea. Purchasing music off the internet should be user-pay. Period. Maybe the ISPs could do a better job of identifying illegal downloaders and stopping them dead instead of passing the buck onto the end user.

what's NEXT?  a hike in the Basic Cable rate of 5 to 10 bucks a month to offset the lost revenue of the major TV networks & movie studios  from consumers who tape movies or episodes of their favorite show???  

cuff me now and haul me away.  i've been taping shows for YEARS!!!!

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?

This is pretty ridiculous.

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.

Quoted from sanchezz

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.  

Quoted from TV_ON_THE_RADIO

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!

Quoted from TV_ON_THE_RADIO

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAztA-Iqb4g

Quoted from TV_ON_THE_RADIO

Some punishment.  For the most part, today's music sucks.  

Ah, you're sounding old
If it sucked so much, why would there be so many downloads?