Is a Filesharing Tax the Way Forward?
Posted: September 1st, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Editorial | Tags: Canada, filesharing, P2P, SAC, Songwriters Association of Canada | 3 Comments »
Peter Mandelson may be advocating the criminalisation of upwards of 7 million people in the current consultation over filesharing (p2p), but the Canadians have entirely different proposals on the table:
The proposal is simple: in exchange for a monthly fee set by Canada’s copyright board Internet subscribers would be able to share music so long as its not for financial gain.
It wants the monthly fee to be voluntary since not everyone shares music online. However, subscribers would have to “sign an undertaking to pay a predetermined amount of damages if they are caught file-sharing.”
The SAC says the proposal is simply a matter of facing reality and trying to figure out a way to monetize P2P.
“The Songwriters Association of Canada believes—and Internet technical experts agree—that unauthorized file-sharing cannot be stopped without actually shutting down the Internet,” says Bill Henderson, VP of the SAC, in a op-ed for Straight.com. “Attempts to sue it out of existence are futile. They alienate our audience, and earn us no money.”
The article goes on to make an interesting point that good as this idea is, the fee would have to rise not just to cover music, but other electronic media, be they films, television or games. Then again if voluntary then those not illegally downloading wouldn’t even be caught by it. It’s an interesting proposal, far fairer and more practical than Mandelson’s draconian proposal of disconnection, but what do you think? Would the fee resolve the problem of paying artists for their ideas, or still perpetuate Big Media’s stranglehold over rights ownership?
(via Owen Blacker)
Tags: Canada, filesharing, P2P, SAC, Songwriters Association of Canada
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I think that whatever businesses / governments do now its far too late – the genie is out of the bottle and it is pretty much impossible to get it back in.
If you look at it that way then the onus is back on the industries involved (ie record labels, film companies etc) to make their product a commodity people want to physically own again – it wasn’t that long ago that people would buy music (my own area of expertise in this subject) albums on the strength of the artwork and extra stuff you got with it – even now Radiohead sold a limited edition vinyl of ‘In Rainbows’ (which they were allowing you to download for free) with extra artwork and a really nice booklet for £40 which sold out within days of release.
If these companies were told to ‘lump it’ I’m sure you would find some really interesting ideas both artistically and in a marketing sense to get these things selling again.
I personally think that to a certain extent filesharing can be a useful thing to some of these people, certainly leaked songs or trailers etc have been used to raise the expectation of the public for a proper release. The use of filesharing can be very handy to aspiring film makers and musicians as it means that they can get their product listened to by a (potentially) huge audience that otherwise wouldn’t hear it.
Its simply time for some of these industries to get out of the stone age, and start to work out where their niche is in the modern digital age.
p.s. loving the new website set up! good work!
I’m glad you like it. For the record if this is a subject about which you’d like to write let me know and I’ll get you the proper permissions for the site. As you say your expertise and involvement in the industry gives you an extremely knowledgable and valid viewpoint over the issues.
I think you make an excellent point. The craftsmanship has been bled out of album production, and the average quality of the product has collapsed (this includes the TV and film industries). Even in the areas where there’s a degree of quality, the retail price of the product is so inordinately high it clearly doesn’t reflect its real value. It’s no wonder people decide to bypass retail and embrace p2p.
Have you seen the entry about the Pirate Party’s public meeting on Saturday? Would that be something you’re interested in attending?
[...] seems to fit in with the Canadian idea of a form of internet taxation to change behaviour, whilst acknowledging that technologically the genie is very much out of the [...]