Posted on 03/09/2005 1:41:36 PM PST by r5boston
An academic at McGill University has a simple plan to stop the plague of unauthorized music downloads on the Internet. But it entails changing the entire music industry as we know it, and Apple Computers, which may have the power to make the change, is listening.
Peering out from under his de rigueur cap, music-industry veteran Sandy Pearlman, a former producer of the Clash and now a visiting scholar at McGill, spoke with a kind of nervous glee while describing his idea at the Canadian Music Week conference in Toronto last week.
Pearlman proposes putting all recorded music on a robust search engine -- Google would be an ideal choice, but even iTunes might work -- and charging an insignificant fee of, say, five cents a song. In addition, a 1 per cent sales tax would be placed on Internet services and new computers -- two industries that many argue have profited enormously from rampant file-sharing, but haven't had to compensate artists.
(Excerpt) Read more at globetechnology.com ...
Sure.
I'm sitting next to a large box with about three hundred compact disks that I paid retail for before mp3's were the rage. As far as I'm concerned I already gave at the office.
Just tax it...that will make it better.
Sorry, no sale- the power to tax is the power to destroy.
heck yeah- it is about time they priced things what they are worth
$0.00 cost to them when I download. (ok electricity, servers...etc.)
but at a nickel I would easily download a few bucks worth every week- as opposed to the $ZERO I have paid for music in the last 15 years.
Yes but no more
The music business isn't a charity, and the money people spend for copyrighted music isn't a donation.
I believe he was referring to the thousands of dollars he already spent on his CDs, purchased at retail or through a club.
If he paid to own the CDs he can do whatever he likes with them, royalties paid in spades.
There are so many things wrong with this idea, I don't know where to start.
The current iTunes model is the fairest one yet - it does not penalize anyone who does not wish to buy the product, the artists (or the people they signed their rights over to) get their money, and those who buy the songs get it at a fair price (determined by the free market).
I refuse to subsidize someone whose services I do not want or use. The tax is stupid. Why should I have to pay sales tax for a computer that may *never* be connected to the internet, let alone download music.
It's an interesting concept, but I would want to see the money go to composers and performers, and especially to have artists who aren't signed by one of the Big Five get their share.
Paying 99 cents per download of a crappy mp3 file ain't worth it. A nickle is probably way too low, but something in the range of 10-25 cents seems more reasonable to both sides.
A nickel's not worth a dime is not worth a quarter is not worth a dollar. iTunes and most mp3 sites charge about a buck. Which can be split between artist, their publishing and the label far more than a nickel. I don't think record companies or artists for that matter would be behind that suggestion. Why take less?
I do agree with charging a little fee to Companies and ISP's. The recording industry has been recieving a little something from audio/digital recording companies like Maxell, TDK and Fuji for years to compensate for losses because of duplicating copywritten materials.
iTunes stuff isn't MP3 any more, it's MP4/AAC.
Um, sure. But I bet the songs I want wouldn't be available. *LOL*
A system like this already exists.
http://www.allofmp3.com
It's a Russian version of iTunes, with all the same music. Instead of paying $0.99 per song, you pay 2 cents per megabyte downloaded - works out to about 6 to 10 cents per song.
Down side is that it's skating past copyright laws.
Exactly. I used to get basic phone service for about $9 a month. Recently, I looked into returning to that, and when I added up all the ( mostly Clinton era addons ) taxes & fees, it came to about $34 a month.
Once you let that camel in the tent, there's no getting him back out.
And allowing taxes means allowing regulation-- i.e., censorship. Bad idea.
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