If you pirate music, you're downloading communism!

[mary]

FOFP wrote, "  the company you subscribe to
may not give access to all that you want."  Either that, or you get too much
useless information.  If I could order 10 stations through cable TV that
really interest me, for a reasonable price, rather than a hundred for an
outrageous price I might consider it.  When
value is placed on information that's dangerous, at best.  Information is
power.  Learning is empowerment.
It concerns me that musicians I love to listen to seem to be losing out,
whether it be through the record companies, or consumers copying their
material, which even I do. That doesn't make it ethically right.  This
thread has been very informative. The whole system of distributing music
over the net should have been thought out thoroughly, a long time ago.
Humans tend to be lazy, and if we can find an easy way to get what we want
many of us will do it. If there were a line of folks jumping off a bridge,
maybe I'd ask them if they wanted a bit of help over the edge.  You can't
stop lemmings.
Your postings, and this thread, in general has been very informative.
Mary
-----Original Message-----
From: BOC/Hawkwind Discussion List
[mailto:BOC-L at LISTSERV.ISPNETINC.NET]On Behalf Of M Holmes
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 7:52 AM
To: BOC-L at LISTSERV.ISPNETINC.NET
Subject: Re: If you pirate music, you're downloading communism!


Gordon Hundley writes:

> On Mar 27, 2009, at 12:22 PM, M Holmes wrote:

> I'm not sure that I like the idea of levying taxes on the use of the
> Internet in order to pay for music.

Not just music, but TV, movies, games, and eventually books.

> You might think that most people
> who use the Internet download music, but that's probably just a
> reflection of the people you know who use the Internet. The greatest
> resistance to broadband adoption in the US is not access but cost. A
> lot of people simply don't see the value in broadband and yet use the
> Internet daily via dial-up to access email. These people would be
> greatly disadvantaged by being forced into paying for your music
> downloads, not least because for many of them financial constraints
> are what caused them to evaluate their Internet access needs and
> settle on dial-up. You actually risk pushing poorer people off the
> Internet if you put such a tax in place.

Possibly. On the other hand my police friends visit a hearty sample of the
homes of poorer families every week. Seems they always have giant TVs
and games consoles for the kids. Tech stuff clearly isn't where the
poverty lies. It also indicates they watch a lot of TV and so would
likely be interested in that aspect of things.

> That might work for affluent
> champions of libertarianism

????? I'm advocating communism here.

> but I would suggest that it isn't beneficial to our countries'
> positions in the global markets.

Hard to say. It depends on what model is used to disburse funds. To the
extent our fortunes depend on prosecuting customers, we're not gonna do
well in the long run anyway.

> If you tax use of the Internet for music, I can guarantee that you
> will follow that within a year with taxing the Internet for films,
> taxing the Internet for broadcast television, taxing the Internet for
> book publishing, taxing the Internet for radio.

That's the whole point: a Dollar a week for all of it.

> Before you know it,
> even the narcissistic blog authors are being paid for your ability to
> read or copy their blog.

Perhaps.

> It's not a good solution. A slightly better solution would be to
> create a subscription model and allow people to purchase such a
> subscription.

Perhaps, but such a model eats more in admin costs. The subscription
models we have so far are very balkanised - the company you subscribe to
may not give access to all that you want. That could be fixed though.

> It makes it easier for somebody to be dishonest (have
> access to copyright material without subscribing) but like any other
> license fee it can be enforced and the naughty can be punished.

The problem is that to have a deterrent effect, the punishments have to
be unpalatable. There are just too many people transgressing.

> I think that kind of service is more or less here already.

As are users being bankrupted in hard cases prosecutions. That's what we
need to get away from.

> But even that stinks if it fails to compensate artists based on how
> often their music is accessed.

Did you read the articles I referenced? Both based their systems around
monitoring and ampling of downloads.

Cheers

FoFP

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