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TKJunkMail
Enjoy the sun
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join:2002-03-03
Avalon, NJ
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| reply to brandon
Re: The problem with voluntary...
said by brandon  :Is that you don't accomplish...anything. The people who want to voluntarily pay for music online already are, through iTunes, Rhapsody, and elsewhere. If voluntary is an option, the people who download illegally will just continue to do so.
I hate to say it, but I agree with the RIAA on this one. Five bucks a month to download whatever I want, whenver I want? Sounds good to me. I agree with point 1 and 2. But your 3rd point(highlighted above), I don't agree with. I don't download music from anyone - legally or illegally. And I don't want to pay $5/mo for the privilege of getting MP3s I don't want.
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Jason Levine
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join:2001-07-13
USA
| Same here. Actually, if I was being charged a $5 a month "piracy tax", I might just start pirating music. After all, if I'm going to pay the fee, I might as well get some music out of the arrangement. If anything, this would increase illegal music downloads, not decrease them.
Plus, what about deaf people? Should they pay $5 a month for music that they couldn't hear if they wanted to?
And what about other industries? Should the movie industry add a $5 fee on our ISP bills in case we download movies? How about the TV industry? The book industry? The software industry? Eventually, our ISP bills will double just to cover the "we're assuming you are a pirate" fees.
The idea is an extremely dumb one. Making it voluntary makes it slightly less dumb, but it still doesn't make it a good idea by any stretch of the imagination.
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-Jason Levine
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dadkins
Can you do Blu?
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join:2003-09-26
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| reply to TKJunkMail
said by TKJunkMail :I agree with point 1 and 2. But your 3rd point(highlighted above), I don't agree with. I don't download music from anyone - legally or illegally. And I don't want to pay $5/mo for the privilege of getting MP3s I don't want. I don't do music, period.
I have a few GB on my HDD, but I don't listen to it.
Screw this $5.00 for something I don't do!
Now, if they make a similar "tax" for movies, I *MIGHT* go for it.
Doubt it will be $5.00 for movies though. 
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asdfdfdfdfdf
@Level3.net
| reply to TKJunkMail
I think concerns about it being voluntary are very legitimate. I have no appetite for forcing people to do things that they don't want to do. No serious debate should casually dismiss such arguments.
At the same time what society is trying to do is to find a way to monetize the massive amount of file sharing that is going on outside of legally licensed channels. Simply creating for pay services isn't likely to resolve that. Collective/blanket licensing is one of the more sensible ways of resolving it, though it is by no means perfect. The problem is how can one practically create such a scheme while maintaining its voluntary nature.
With roads we can have a gas tax. Since there is a close connection between amount of gas consumed and amount of driving/use of roads, this works pretty well.
Of course, even here we can't construct anything that is perfectly fair. Someone will say "I own a lawn care business and the gas I buy isn't to drive cars on roads" so why should I be forced to pay for roads I'm not using. The best we can ever hope for is to try to create something that is reasonably fair to most people and to try to minimize unpleasant side effects imposed on the innocent.
I don't see how we could translate the road example into the isp space however. We could possibly tie it into a pay per byte system, but even here there will be people who say I pay for a lot of bandwidth but am not using that bandwidth to infringe copyright so why should I be punished.
On an individual level I'm not sure we can come up with a voluntary approach, at least not without going with a police state approach to net activity.
What if I pay for the collective licensing scheme? I am paying for use of applications that I want to use, drm free material and free exchange with others.
How can I be certain, if others can opt out, that the person I'm connecting to isn't doing something illegal (i.e. maybe he opted out but is still behaving as if he is licensed to transmit files)?
The only way to deal with this, on an individual level, is to create an extremely intrusive big brother environment where everyone's activity is constantly monitored to make sure that all those engaging in this activity are legitimate and shutting down those who aren't. I hope we can agree that this is not an acceptable approach.
If we resolve this by only allowing paying customers a certain application with music tied up with drm it defeats the whole purpose of doing this and puts us right back to the drm encrusted for pay services that already exist, with masses of people functioning outside of the law.
One more reasonable resolution would be to do it at the isp level and not at the individual level.
An isp that wants to buy in would buy in for ALL customers. One that wants to opt out would opt out for All its customers and would then block all p2p activity for all its customers. An individual would then have to change isp to one that opts out if he didn't want to participate.
This would probably lead to its own form of coercion. Those who don't have many isp options could be trapped with no option for opt-in and be forced to a significantly limited internet experience. We could be setting many isp services on a path of increasing limits and control over their customers.
On the other hand, it is more reasonable than monitoring individual behavior and it could be a way to balance concerns with the freedom and openness of those who want to pay, while maintaining some choice and not falling into a grotesque network of constant monitoring of individual behavior.
In the end, though, the simplest way, that would probably offend the fewest people, is simply to have everyone participate because there would likely be very few people who would actually want to opt out if we lived in a world where we could consume limitless music, freely and openly, for $5 a month. Yes, there will still be some who don't want to. Yes it bothers me that they would be coerced into $60 a year for something they don't want. I do think, though that it is a solution that maximizes benefit for the largest number of people while minimizing harm to those who don't want to participate. It certainly isn't ideal, but it may be the closest to ideal we are likely to get in an imperfect world. | |
meowmix
@bright.net | reply to Jason Levine
Amen. | |
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