Would you pay 5 cents for a song?

The Globe and Mail ^ | Wednesday, March 9, 2005 | GUY DIXON

[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.

[k2blader]

Well, this wouldn't be a forced tax, would it? You'd only pay it if you buy.

[HungarianGypsy]

I agree that the artists and composers should get some of the money. I know a musician who's contact states he does not get anything from his album until it sells 3,000.

[backhoe]

a 1 per cent sales tax would be placed on Internet services and new computers --

[Radix]

The music industry has a bad business profile.

They are essentially dinosaurs in the modern age. They should be extinct but they don't want to accept that fact. Gosh, in the old days these folks sold us buggy whips and chamber pots.

Screw em. I am the rare breed who never buys music, and so I look at it from my own perspective. Consider any other industry involving intellectual property and none will be seen as having the preferential treatment that the RIAA has enjoyed.

Good riddance to these rip off artists!

[CharlieOK1]

I already do... OK, about 10 cents a song, but whatchu gonna do?

First thing you wanna do is change the website from Russian to English (button at top left corner of page)

[CharlieOK1]

beat me to it dude.

[Terpfen]

I'd pay five cents for a FLAC file, assuming someone actually made a song available over these services that I care about.

I somehow doubt Yasunori Mitsuda's stuff would be available.

[k2blader]

D'oh, I see now. That's not good.

[Chunga]

You haven't "paid for the same copyright over and over again" within the scenario you've described; You've purchased copies of copyrighted material you wanted to own in differing formats. Neither do you own a "license" of the material; music licenses can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you don't own a license you can't transfer it to anyone.

[RJL]

An academic at McGill University... Pearlman proposes... 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

I don't support this plan, but I could support, say a "insignificant" 5% tax on all liberal professor's and academic's income to pay for free music to all.

/Sarcasm

[Cyber Ninja]

Prices for most tunes should range from $0.0001 & $0.025 depending on the market.

It's time for the millicent & microcent.

[The Great RJ]

Take a look at your next phone bill and see all the taxes and fees ....levied at close to 40%. This is what we have in store if we give the government even minimal taxing authorty over the Internet. Remeber the initial rate of the first US income tax was only 1%.

[Centurion2000]

From your linked website :

Users are responsible for any usage and distribution of all materials received from AllOFMP3.com. This responsibility depends on the local legislation of each user's country of residence. AllOFMP3.com's Administration does not keep up with the laws of different countries and is not responsible the actions of non-Russian users.

I think the Russians just gave RIAA the big finger with this one.

[John Lenin]

Sign me up.

[Teacher317]

25 cents is probably my upper limit. I've bought 5 CD's in the past 4 years... and three were gifts for others.

[Clypp]

Isn't www.allofmp3.com a collection site for the Russian Mafia?

[Arthalion]

In addition, a 1 per cent sales tax would be placed on Internet services and new computers

This concept works for hardware and media frequently used to pirate music (I wouldn't have a problem with a tax on MP3 players), but it wouldn't work for either of the two services listed, and here's why:

1. Computers: The majority of computers sold in the US, and indeed much of the world, are sold to BUSINESSES, not consumers. I saw somewhere that over 2/3rds of Dells and HP's sales, and more than 90% of IBM's sales, go straight into offices and small businesses. The computer industry will fight hard against any general tax that's going to cut into their sales, especially when almost none of the affected computers will be used to pirate music in the first place.

2. Internet services: The Internet is a global medium, and taxing only Americans (and possibly Britons) to subsidize the entire planets piracy is inherently unjust and would be the source of a lot of popular opposition. Why should the US have to pay so that the whole planet can steal?

3. I have family in Canada, where similar laws already exist for CD media. These laws are having an unintended consequence up there. Kids who previously avoided pirating music because they felt that it was "stealing" now do it with impunity. Why? Because their attitude is that they're paying for it anyway, so they may as well enjoy it. Music piracy in Canada and Great Britain has skyrocketed since these tax laws were extended to computer media, and show no signs of slowing down. I can tell you this...I've never pirated a song in my life, but if I were forced to start paying for it anyway though my ISP and as a tax on my computers or computer media, I'll start downloading music from these P2P services. I gladly pay a tax on the roads because I use the roads. I pay tax on my gasoline because I use the gasoline. I pay a tax on my property because I live on the property. I pay a tax on my income because the government says they need the money to fund government projects and our common defense. If I'm going to start paying a tax for music and movie downloading, you can damned well bet that I'm going to start downloading movies and music.

[jpsb]

" the money people spend for copyrighted music isn't a donation."

No it is a rip off.

[CharlieOK1]

curious to know where you heard that...

[sittnick]

You haven't "paid for the same copyright over and over again" within the scenario you've described; You've purchased copies of copyrighted material you wanted to own in differing formats.

I haven't paid for an unlimited license, but something more akin to the license when one buys copyrighted software. I could make copies of all of them (the 45, the 8 track, the lp, etc) and transfer a digital recording along with the original without doing anything wrong. (The recipient just has to keep them together) So yes, in the way I am using the term license, of course I have multiple licenses, because I could give out a dozen discrete copies of Bennie and the Jets that were paid for a dozen times. Do I have the right to play it on the radio or at a sporting event, no, in that sense it is not a license. But the owner of a recording can certainly have it in a different format for personal use. That is what I mean by license, a personal license, as outlined in fair-use in the famous Betamax case. You can use a different term if you like, but you know what I mean. I have found in the audiobook side of our business that music recording people have a different nomenclature than software and book publishing people, mostly written to the disadvantage of the artist! Fortunately for our compensated artists (sound engineers and readers) we use the more rational "book" approach to royalties.

I think everybody agrees that the big record companies have not yet faced reality that people will no longer pay the same for their products when there are so many more reasonably priced alternatives (e.g. DVDs). It is just a matter of time before someone puts a lossless compressed collection on an audio DVD and provides hours of music for the price that the record companies charge for 74 minutes or less.