Mon. Mar 31, 2008
Mandatory Music Tax
The music industry, bleeding profusely from largely self inflicted wounds, is proposing to volunteer your wallet to bind their wounds:
Edgar Bronfman Jr.‘s Warner Music Group has tapped industry veteran Jim Griffin to spearhead a controversial plan to bundle a monthly fee into consumers’ internet-service bills for unlimited access to music.
The plan—the boldest move yet to keep the wounded entertainment industry giants afloat—is simple: Consumers will pay a monthly fee, bundled into an internet-service bill in exchange for unfettered access to a database of all known music.
“Today, it has become purely voluntary to pay for music,” Griffin told Portfolio.com in an exclusive sit-down this week. “If I tell you to go listen to this band, you could pay, or you might not. It’s pretty much up to you. So the music business has become a big tip jar.”
Portfolio.com Warner’s New Web Guru
Since they claim “it has become purely voluntary to pay for music,” the solution is obviously to make it involuntary. Mandatory.
It’s the only viable solution. It’s simply not possible for an industry to look at a changing marketplace and adapt to this new environment. It’s much easier to bully some common carrier into adding a tax on everyone.
Especially when you’ve been completely tone deaf to the coming thunder for about a decade, and have no clue how to ride the wave that’s been on the horizon for some time. It’s like standing on the beach facing a tidal wave, and rather than run (and prepare to swim), you continue standing there expecting others to build a protective wall around you.
“We’re still clinging to the vine of music as a product,” Griffin says, calling the industry’s plight “Tarzan” economics.
“But we’re swinging toward the vine of music as a service. We need to get ready to let go and grab the next vine, which is a pool of money and a fair way to split it up, rather than controlling the quantity and destiny of sound recordings.”
“We want to monetize the anarchy of the internet.”
What a lovely sound bite. “We want to monetize the anarchy of the internet.” The problem is, if you want to monetize anarchy, you’ve got to get some of it on ya. And that’s the core problem the recording industry has been unable to face. They can’t accept that their Digital Rights Management schemes don’t work, never mind consider the anarchic idea of selling music without them.
They haven’t got the brain power to see that terrestrial radio is long dead as a promotional tool, and has been replaced by the Internet and MP3 players. If they had, they’d pump their promotions in that direction the way they used to with radio. Instead, they do their best to throttle such means.
And now, they want to use those same means to tax us. The goal? Michael Arrington hypothesizes, “$5 per month from everyone, or fees of $20 billion per year. That’s double the current size of the recorded music industry ($10 billion).”
They even have a nifty name for it that they’ve used successfully already, “a covenant not to sue”:
US colleges and their alumni may be offered the right to P2P file-sharing under one of the most radical copyright reforms in a hundred years, The Register has learned.
The amnesty would be part of a “covenant not to sue”, covered by a collective licence that offers the right to exchange major label repertory over a participating college’s campus network. Rights holders would be compensated from a pot of money drawn from students’ tuition fees.
The Register: US students, alumni to get legal P2P
So. An industry that once made its millions by selling hard products in bricks and mortar stores hopes to now makes its millions from a portion of college tuitions and your monthly ISP payment. And for that fee, it will provide … exactly what?
A promise not to sue us?
I’ve been a good netizen. I’ve made a comfortable living from copyrighted works, and therefore by nature, respect the copyrights of others. I dislike P2P applications, and do not allow them on the computers in my home. I’ve used a web based version of bitTorrent once, to download a large patch for a paid application. Last year, about a dozen new music CDs entered my home, via purchase or gift.
I’ve provided the RIAA with zero grounds for a lawsuit.
But should they succeed with this ploy, all of the above will change. I’ll not buy another CD … ever. I’ll download gigabytes of music per month. Probably start uploading it, too. I’ll eat much more than my $5/month worth, I promise you that.
You will have converted a law-abiding customer into a spiteful downloader. Good job!
Meanwhile, the RIAA’s counterparts in the movie industry have another plan:
The Motion Picture Association of America is calling on broadband providers to pull the plug on copyright-infringing users.
Jim Williams, the MPAA’s chief technology officer and senior vice president, said on Thursday that it’s in the best interests of Internet providers to sift through data traveling across their networks and interrupt transmissions that violate copyright law.
CNET News.com: MPAA to broadband providers: Pull the plug on pirates
That’s going to be fun! Your broadband provider will be asked by the RIAA to charge a fee and allow P2P exchange of music, and by the MPAA, they’ll be asked to block the exchange of movies via P2P on the same network.
Two industries who have refused to adapt to the digital world will try to fix that by asking a third industry to do the impossible.
Published 03:29PM, Mon, Mar 31 2008
Category: Copyright Music
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Peanut Gallery
As another person who buys maybe 12 cds per year, I recently tried going the legitimate download route, and it didn’t work out too well for me. The first time, I guess I made the mistake of buying a cd-download from a Microsoft music site (maybe I-tunes would have been better). I had the album on my hard drive and listened to it for a couple of months. Every time I played it, a background application communicated with the Microsoft site to make sure I had really paid for it. 4 months into my “ownership” of the right to listen to it, the background application stopped working and I started getting nasty error messages about pirated music. I went back to the site and wrote Support 5 or 6 times to try and verify that I had actually paid for it. I never got a response, and the album continues to take up space on my hard drive, and I can’t listen to it. Being an idiot, about a year after that, I bought (not rented) a movie download from Amazon, which downloaded to my Tivo. I can watch it any time I want, on the Tivo. But I can’t transfer it to a computer for storage or let anyone else in the house watch “my” dvd unless they sit up in my room. It’s not a big deal, I can cope, but as a consumer, I now have a bad taste in my mouth that wasn’t there before when I think about spending dollars on entertainment.
Paul: “we’ve given away the keys to the kingdom and are now at the mercy of Comcast & AT&T’s goodwill. They now control access to, and distribution of, information and I think they will be more than happy to work in league with the MPAA, RIAA, NSA, FBI and whomever else to restrict, limit, tax, and control the internet. We’re screwed.’
Maybe. Anarchy has been shown to be a powerful and spiteful force on this Internet, though. There’s also the concept that some companies, like Google, need net neutrality as much as you and I do, and maybe there’d soon be a GoogleNet if ThisNet went south (since they have tons of dark fiber and huge datacenters all over that no one seems quite sure what they’re going to do with).
And the Linux/slashdot/digg crowd conjures some kind of FreeNet piggybacked on interconnected wifi routers, string, and dixie cups.
And, oh yeah, there’s the rest of the world. Comcast and AT&T only reach so far.
I agree, we should be watchful, and loud when treaded upon. Or else we are screwed.
rturner: “which downloaded to my Tivo”
(fingers in ears) la-la-la-la-la-la-la-I can’t hear you. I have not yet fully desteamed from attempting to get our Tivo, Tivo Desktop, and my MacBook to acknowledge each other’s existence.
Tivo has become a four letter word in our home.
Ahhh, the famous Tivo Desktop/Macbook connection (or lack thereof). Here’s a link
Probably not more than a few hours of reading there. Then we can start troubleshooting.
My old analog tv died and I ended up with an HDTV replacement. Unfortunately, if I try and record HDTV with my Tivo, I get gibberish. Or, I can rent one cable box for standard tv with Tivo, and another cable box for HDTV, but I’ll have to watch the commercials because I can’t record it.
But I’m sitting on all of this, and I’m not worrying too much about the RIAA, because if present trends continue, cable bills, downloads and tivos could be the least of our worries.
The most informative thing about this post and the comments is that people still buy CDs. Not to sound like some hipster loser who needs to be beaten like a Tibetan monk, but I can’t remember the last time someone I knew bought a CD (1999 or so for me).
Switching gears, the thing that sucks about iTunes is that their songs are encoded at a fairly low bitrate. When I’m listening to my iPod, I can tell when a song I purchased from our former Communist friends comes up, as the sound level and quality increase considerably. A song from iTunes sounds muffled and weak by comparison.
And the Linux/slashdot/digg crowd conjures some kind of FreeNet piggybacked on interconnected wifi routers, string, and dixie cups.
As the good book says, “And by their SSID’s, you shall know them.”
Richard, I’m just not up for any more Tivo Torture right now. I was only trying their desktop just to see how it worked, not because it was vital. My bad.
Paul, I’ve only bought two songs via iTunes, because, like you, I found them to be “adequate” quality at best (though I understand they’ve upped the bitrate since those days). And that’s exactly why I still pay cash money for certain CDs (and yes, once I’ve imported it, I rarely touch the CD again.) ... I can make a much better conversion than I can buy online.
I wonder whose fault that could be?
A paradox: the entertainment industry hates and fears creativity.
This is driven by risk. One out of ten efforts in entertainment is actually profitable. But nobody knows which one. So the industry constantly copies the last thing that sold.
But even that doesn’t really work. So they spread the risk of the nine failures by having large production companies and consortiums.
But that still doesn’t really help. So, they try to minimize every other risk.
Eventually this ceases to be industry strategy and becomes industry culture. Are they going to risk getting out in front of a complete rearrangement of the distribution system? Ha!
To illustrate: Imagine you’re in a speedboat headed for the rocks. But you’re in shark infested waters, and the boat is rickety, and will probably capsize if you turn it even a little.
You might turn, figuring that the possibility of being eaten by sharks is better than the certainty of being dashed on the rocks. The entertainment industry is full of people who would rather just keep going straight and hope the rocks move.
Side note: To go with the paradox, here’s an oxymoron: “Entertainment Lawyer.” (We charge the wrong amount to be entertaining. If you’re paying more than $20/hour but less than $1000/hr., you’re not being entertained. Just ask Spitzer.)
Who needs a music tax when the beat just goes?
I always knew hip-hop would save us.
Mr. Carter sez: “I’ve turned into the Rolling Stones of hip-hop.” Right … and John McCain is the Led Zeppelin of politics.
So, instead of letting one megacorp mishandle their recording career, major artists now have the chance to have one megacorp mishandle their recording career, touring, merchandising, and endorsements.
I suppose it’s a start that people like Trent Reznor, Prince, and Jay-Z are finding new ways to package and sell their product. However, until the system allows starting artists to get a digital leg up, I don’t know how much good these individual deals do.
However, until the system allows starting artists to get a digital leg up, I don’t know how much good these individual deals do.
These deals do start to change the environment for starting artists. Because they severely undermine the old-school industry by taking away the sure-thing artists.
And Jay-Z does have a point about that Stones comparison. He’s already done one “last album” and “comeback album.” At just 38, he’s good for another dozen “retirement/comeback” cycles.
.
(Welcome to Campaign 2008, featuring George W. Bush as John Bonham.)
Jay-Z is not The Answer.
I find it ironic that to get aural pleasure you’ll have to visit a visual ghetto.
MySpace?
Dude, you are old.
Facebook, man. Facebook.
Dude, the record companies are old. They chose MySpace, not me (I do not frequent the web trailer parks known as Facebook and MySpace). They appear to be incapable of doing anything to solve their own internal industry problems other than latching on to the existing success of some other, be it ISP’s or MySpace.
Meanwhile in the UK, one ISP has thrown down the gauntlet:
“Our position is very clear. We are the conduit that gives users access to the internet. We do not control the internet, nor do we control what our users do on the internet. I cannot foresee any circumstances in which we would voluntarily disconnect a customer’s account on the basis of a third party alleging a wrongdoing.”
Existing law should be plenty. For example, if I use the phone to make a terroristic threat, the authorities do not punish me by disconnecting my phone, they charge me with a prosecutable crime. But the trends in their lawsuits have slowly tunred against them, thus they try these ploys.
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Yeah, I can pretty much guarantee that if you add an RIAA Tax to my broadband bill, I’m going to download non-DRM, non-iTunes, non-subscription music without much care or concern for copyright. I’m going to get well more than my $5/month’s worth out of it.
Also, if they do wish to proceed with this tax, then I think we should start a movement to tax all “Intellectual Property” claimed by companies. If it’s property, it’s taxable.
Finally, this is one of the reasons why I think the adoption of broadband will ultimately be detrimental to the “anarchy of the internet” and will lead to further centralization and control. It was no big deal when you had to call in to a local access number and move data over a regular phone line. But since we’re moving mountains of data over the broadband tubes of only a handful of providers, we’ve given away the keys to the kingdom and are now at the mercy of Comcast & AT&T’s goodwill. They now control access to, and distribution of, information and I think they will be more than happy to work in league with the MPAA, RIAA, NSA, FBI and whomever else to restrict, limit, tax, and control the internet. We’re screwed.