And if we never have downloaded music and have no interest in it we get taxed. That is fair...
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Internet Music Tax
at least they had the brains not to propose a payroll deduction....but I bet they talked about it!
Internet Music Tax
Why has it become normal to expect the government to "Guarantee" a business plan? The music industry needs to find a way to adapt to the new technological environment, just like the rest of us! And the analogy to a protection racket is very good - do you think we can get a US Attorney to consider a RICCO indictment?
Fair distribution
I don't know anything about the music industry, but I doubt that all labels are represented by the RIAA, even domestic ones. I doubt the tax would be properly distributed nor would a yearly fee.
It's obvious their current business plan isn't working out too well - lawsuits will never make up the price point or stop piracy. They'll never stop piracy through mechanical controls either - if I can play it, I can record it. They need to look to the future & change their model, realizing that in a digital age the price plan needs to depend on early sales, quality & added content. Make it worthwhile for the average music buff to buy a CD instead of download it. In other words, give the customer what he wants - a good product at a reasonable price.
I agree that it is a bad idea, but for a different reason
Since 1991, when I used Compuserve, thru today, I have never downloaded a piece of audio music.
Why should I have to pay for something I don't use?
What if we blocked music?
Are there any provisions in the plan for companies that ban electronic music from their systems? We're in the process of centralizing a bunch of remote centers and part of the config is to not allow this type of copyrighted content. It would be highly unreasonable to charge us $60K for the 1,000 users on the network for something we don't use. However one law suite per year would easily cost us more than that. I would suspect we would grudgingly pay it and so would most companies. I also noticed that there was a bill on the House floor to raise the infringement limit from 250K to $2M. Egad! Pay the tax and long live the king.
Sketchy details
The details on the "tax" are still very sketchy so I don't know for certain. That said, I suspect that the only way to be certain of being indemnified will be to pay up. We know that the RIAA are willing to start sending threatening letters based on dubious "evidence" and then settle out of court so they would only have to "believe" that you were infringing and you'd up for a suit.
It will take a while to see if anything comes of this but the probability is unfortunately quite high that the idea will not just go away without a fight from those of us who "get" the issues involved.
The more things change
It sure smells like the tax on audio recording tape passed when the RIAA was certain that audio cassettes were going to bring about the end of the world.
It's trite, but maybe the music companies should look at the public's demographics and release music that people older than 22 might want to actually buy. No... that way lies madness... after that, someone would expect American car companies to build cars that people want to buy.
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