February 24, 2004

A Better Way Forward:
Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music File Sharing
"Let the Music Play" White Paper

Download PDF (51k) here: http://www.eff.org/share/collective_lic_wp.pdf

The current battles surrounding peer-to-peer file sharing are a losing proposition for everyone. The record labels continue to face lackluster sales, while the tens of millions of American file sharers -- American music fans -- are made to feel like criminals. Every day the collateral damage mounts -- privacy at risk, innovation stymied, economic growth suppressed, and a few unlucky individuals singled out for legal action by the recording industry. And the litigation campaign against music fans has not put a penny into the pockets of artists.

We need a better way forward.

The Premises

First, artists and copyright holders deserve to be fairly compensated.

Second, file sharing is here to stay. Killing Napster only spawned more decentralized networks. Most evidence suggests that file sharing is at least as popular today as it was before the lawsuits began.

Third, the fans do a better job making music available than the labels. Apple's iTunes Music Store brags about its inventory of over 500,000 songs. Sounds pretty good, until you realize that the fans have made millions of songs available on KaZaA. If the legal clouds were lifted, the peer-to-peer networks would quickly improve.

Fourth, any solution should minimize government intervention in favor of market forces.

The Proposal: Voluntary Collective Licensing

EFF has spent the past year evaluating alternatives that get artists paid while making file sharing legal. One solution has emerged as the favorite: voluntary collective licensing.

The concept is simple: the music industry forms a collecting society, which then offers file-sharing music fans the opportunity to "get legit" in exchange for a reasonable regular payment, say $5 per month. So long as they pay, the fans are free to keep doing what they are going to do anyway -- share the music they love using whatever software they like on whatever computer platform they prefer -- without fear of lawsuits. The money collected gets divided among rights-holders based on the popularity of their music.

In exchange, file-sharing music fans will be free to download whatever they like, using whatever software works best for them. The more people share, the more money goes to rights-holders. The more competition in applications, the more rapid the innovation and improvement. The more freedom to fans to publish what they care about, the deeper the catalog.

The Precedent: Broadcast Radio

It has been done before.

Voluntarily creating collecting societies like ASCAP, BMI and SESAC was how songwriters brought broadcast radio in from the copyright cold in the first half of the twentieth century.

Songwriters originally viewed radio exactly the way the music industry today views KaZaA users -- as pirates. After trying to sue radio out of existence, the songwriters ultimately got together to form ASCAP (and later BMI and SESAC). Radio stations interested in broadcasting music stepped up, paid a fee, and in return got to play whatever music they liked, using whatever equipment worked best. Today, the performing-rights societies ASCAP and BMI collect money and pay out millions annually to their artists. Even though these collecting societies get a fair bit of criticism, there's no question that the system that has evolved for radio is preferable to one based on trying to sue radio out of existence one broadcaster at a time.

Copyright lawyers call this voluntary collective licensing. The same could happen today for file sharing: Copyright holders could get together to offer their music in an easy-to-pay, all-you-can-eat set. We could get there without the need for changes to copyright law and with minimal government intervention.

The Money: Collecting It

Starting with just the 60 million Americans who have been using file-sharing software, $5 a month would net over $3 billion of pure profit annually to the music industry -- no CDs to ship, no online retailers to cut in on the deal, no payola to radio conglomerates, no percentage to KaZaA or anyone else. Best of all, it's an evergreen revenue stream -- money that just keeps coming, during good times and bad, so long as fans want digital music online. The pie grows with the growth of music sharing on the Internet, instead of shrinking. The total annual gross revenues of the music industry today are estimated at $11 billion. But that's gross revenues. A collective licensing regime for file-sharing can promise $3 billion in annual profits to the record labels -- more than they've ever made.

How do we get filesharers to pay up? That's where the market comes in -- those who today are under legal threat will have ample incentive to opt for a simple $5 per month fee. There should be as many mechanisms for payment as the market will support. Some fans could buy it directly through a website (after all, this was what the RIAA had in mind with its "amnesty" program). ISPs could bundle the fee into their price of their broadband services for customers who are interested in music downloading. After all, ISPs would love to be able to advertise a broadband package that includes "downloads of all the music you want." Universities could make it part of the cost of providing network services to students. P2P file-sharing software vendors could bundle the fee into a subscription model for their software, which would neatly remove the cloud of legal uncertainty that has inhibited investment in the P2P software field.

The Money: Dividing It Up

The money collected would then be divided between artists and rights-holders based on the relative popularity of their music.

Figuring out what is popular can be accomplished through a mix of anonymously monitoring what people are sharing (something companies like Big Champagne and BayTSP are already doing) and recruiting volunteers to serve as the digital music equivalent of Nielsen families. Billions in television advertising dollars are divided up today using systems like this. In a digital environment, a mix of these approaches should strike the right balance between preserving privacy and accurately estimating popularity.

The Advantages

The advantages of this approach are clear:

Artists and rights holders get paid. What's more, the more broadband grows, the more they get paid, which means that the entertainment industry's powerful lobby will be working for a big, open, and innovative Internet, instead of against it.

Government intervention is kept to a minimum: copyright law need not be amended, and the collecting society sets its own prices. The $5 per month figure is a suggestion, not a mandate. At the same time, the market will keep the price reasonable -- collecting societies make more money with a palatable price and a larger base of subscribers, than with a higher price and expensive enforcement efforts.

Broadband deployment gets a real boost as the "killer app" -- music file sharing -- is made legitimate.

Investment dollars pour into the now-legitimized market for digital music file-sharing software and services. Rather than being limited to a handful of "authorized services" like Apple's iTunes and Napster 2.0, you'll see a marketplace filled with competing file-sharing applications and ancillary services. So long as the individual fans are licensed, technology companies can stop worrying about the impossible maze of licensing and instead focus on providing fans with the most attractive products and services in a competitive marketplace.

Music fans finally have completely legal access to the unlimited selection of music that the file-sharing networks have provided since Napster. With the cloud of litigation and "spoofing" eliminated, these networks will rapidly improve.

The distribution bottleneck that has limited the opportunities of independent artists will be eliminated. Artists can choose any road to online popularity -- including, but no longer limited to, a major label contract. So long as their songs are being shared among fans, they will be paid.

Payment will come only from those who are interested in downloading music, only so long as they are interested in downloading.

How does this help artists?

Artists benefit in at least three ways. First, artists will now be paid for the file sharing that has become a fact of digital life.

Second, independent artists no longer need a record deal with a major label to reach large numbers of potential fans -- so long as you have any fans who are sharing your music online, others will be able to access your music on equal footing with major label content. In other words, digital distribution will be equally available to all artists.

Third, when it comes to promotion, artists will be able to use any mechanism they like, rather than having to rely on major labels to push radio play. Anything that makes your works popular among file sharers gets you paid. There would still be a role for the record industry -- many artists will still want help with promotion, talent development, and other supportive services. With more options for artists to choose from, the contracts will be more balanced than the one-sided deals offered to most artists today.

What about antitrust?

Because a collective licensing solution will depend on a single collecting society issuing blanket licenses covering all (or nearly all) music copyrights, there will need to be some antitrust regulation of the collecting society to ensure that it does not abuse its market power. Both ASCAP and BMI, for example, have been subject to a court-administered antitrust consent decree for many decades. The regulation need not be extensive, as the collecting society will essentially be selling only a single product at a single price to all comers. Regulators will keep a close eye on the collecting society to make sure that it deals fairly with artists and copyright holders, most of whom will rely on the collecting society for compensation for noncommercial filesharing.

How do we ensure accurate division of the money?

Transparency will be critical -- the collecting society must hold its books open for artists, copyright holders, and the public to examine. The entity should be a nonprofit, and should strive to keep its administrative costs to a minimum. There are examples of similar collecting societies in the music industry, such as ASCAP and SoundExchange. We should learn from, and improve upon, their example. Giving artists a bigger voice should help ensure that their concerns with the current collecting societies are addressed.

When it comes to actually figuring out relative popularity, we need to balance the desire for perfect "census-like" accuracy with the need to preserve privacy. A system based on sampling strikes a good balance between these goals. On the one hand, in a public P2P network, it is relatively easy to find out what people are sharing. Big Champagne already does this, compiling a "Top 10" for the P2P networks. This kind of monitoring does not compromise user privacy, since this monitoring does not tie songs shared to individually identifiable information. At the same time, this general network monitoring can be complemented by closer monitoring of volunteers who will serve as the "Nielsen families" of P2P.

By combining these two methods, it should be possible to attain a high degree of accuracy, protect privacy, and prevent "cheating."

What if the music industry won't do it?

The music industry is still a long way from admitting that its existing business models are obsolete. But the current effort to sue millions American music fans into submission is destined to fail. After a few more quarters of lackluster sales, with file-sharing networks still going strong and "authorized services" failing to make up for sliding revenues, the music industry will be needing a "Plan B." We hope they will see that voluntary collective licensing is the best way forward.

If, instead, they continue their war against the Internet and continue inflicting collateral damage on privacy, innovation and music fans, then it may be time for Congress to take steps to force their hand. Congress can enact a "compulsory license" and create a collecting society to move us toward a sensible solution. Government involvement, however, should be a last resort -- the music industry has the power to implement a sensible, more flexible solution right now.

What about artists who won't join? How do we gather all the rights?

Artists and rights holders would have the choice to join the collecting society, and thereby collect their portion of the fees collected, or to remain outside the society and have no practical way to receive compensation for the file sharing that will inevitably continue. Assuming a critical mass of major music copyright owners joins the collecting society, the vast majority of smaller copyright owners will have a strong incentive to join, just as virtually all professional songwriters opt to join ASCAP, BMI or SESAC.

The complexity of music industry contracts and history make it very difficult for record labels and music publishers to be sure what rights they control. Accordingly, by joining the collecting society, copyright owners will not be asked to itemize rights, but will instead simply covenant not to sue those who pay the blanket license fee. In this way, music fans and innovators are not held back by the internal contractual squabbles that plague the music industry.

What about file sharers who won't pay?

The vast majority of file sharers are willing to pay a reasonable fee for the freedom to download whatever they like, using whatever software suits them. In addition to those who would opt to take a license if given the opportunity, many more will likely have their license fees paid by intermediaries, like ISPs, universities, and software vendors.

So long as the fee is reasonable, effectively invisible to fans, and does not restrict their freedom, the vast majority of file sharers will opt to pay rather than engage in complex evasion efforts. So long as "free-riding" can be limited to a relatively small percentage of file sharers, it should not pose a serious risk to a collective licensing system. After all, today artists and copyright owners are paid nothing for file sharing -- it should be easy to do much better than that with a collective licensing system. Copyright holders (and perhaps the collecting society itself) would continue to be entitled to enforce their rights against "free-loaders." Instead of threatening them with ruinous damages, however, the collecting society can offer stragglers the opportunity to pay a fine and get legal. This is exactly what collecting societies like ASCAP do today.

What about other countries?

Non-U.S. rights holders would, of course, be welcome to join the collecting society for their fair share of the fees collected from American file sharers. As for file sharers in other countries, there is every reason to believe that if a collective licensing approach is successful in the U.S., it will receive a warm welcome and enthusiastic imitation abroad.

A relatively small number of countries today account for almost all of the revenues of the music industry. So establishing a collective licensing system in just a few countries could turn around the downward spiral in music industry revenues. The music industry already has an international "clearing" system for apportioning payments between countries.

What about the authorized music services?

The "authorized music services" like Apple's iTunes and Napster 2.0 would be free to compete against the P2P services, just as they do today. In addition, they could themselves adopt elements of P2P architectures, thereby dramatically expanding the music inventories they could offer music fans.

What's to stop the music industry from charging sky-high fees?

The enforcement costs faced by a collecting society for file sharing will keep prices in line. After all, if the society attempts to charge too much, intermediaries won't be able to bundle the fees into the cost of their products ($5/mo. license on a $50/mo. broadband account makes sense; trying to tack $100/mo. license, in contrast, won't work) and file sharers will likely rebel in droves. For example, when movie studios charged $90 for a VHS movie, they faced widespread piracy. They learned that, by lowering prices, they made more money and eliminated much of the piracy problem. In other words, reasonable pricing makes the system work for everyone.

What about movies, software, video games, and other digital content?

The music industry is the only industry that appears to be unable to adjust their business models to take file sharing into account. And it is the music industry that has been leading the way in suing ISPs, software companies, and individual music fans.

The movie industry, in contrast, is having its most profitable years in history. The software and video game industries also continue to show strong growth and profitability. Each one of these industries has taken steps to adapt their business models to the realities of file sharing.

Of course, if other industries want to form voluntary collecting societies and offer blanket licenses to file sharers, there is nothing to stop them from doing so. Individuals would then be free to purchase the license if they were interested in downloading these materials from the file-sharing networks.

Note: This document is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license.

sounds reasonable, balanced and fair. I would pay $5 for that. sadly The music industry doesn't see things reasonably and I fear this will go on quite a bit longer before they see the benifits of this plan. EFF did an awsome job

Here it is folks, laid out in plain language.
I promise you that it will take an act of congress to get it implemented though. The RIAA and the labels will NEVER go for anything this fair. I-tunes and the other so called "legit" services will also balk. Ironically, this very thing would save the industry, in fact, it will make the industry richer than ever. I wish we could hold off on it for a while and let the RIAA take many more lumps, but I predict the beginings of this model will be in place very soon. When the RIAA finally sees how inevitable it is, watch for attempts to restrict payments to independents and other "non-legitimate" artists. Also, watch for the labels attempt to claim that THEY are due the royalties and not the artists/songwriters.

There are gonna be some very big battles over this. We MUST make sure the resulting agreements are truely agreements and NOT RIAA dictations on how "licensing" is implemented and royalties distributed.

Shmoo, of Electric Gypsy
Support Local and Independent Music!
(our new CD is only $3 at homemademusic.com

So 5 dollars or less goes to an artist everytime one of their songs are downloaded...how do you think someone will feel when they rake in 5 dollars in the first quarter?

well if the industry doesn't want to go this far the only thing I can say about our movement is...

"Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead!!!!"

i would pay 5 bucks to see file sharing really take off and get the riaa off our backs but not unless it puts the independents on even ground with the lables. i think we would see some real interesting marketing gimmicks from artist's to get people to download their music and it would be fun for all concerned. i dont really want to cut the riaa any slack but for the future of filesharing i think it needs to happen

I'm a little skeptical of the part where the labels are supposed to distribute roylaties to the artist. Haven't there been issues about the artists never receiving some of the royalties they were supposed to get before?

i think if they do it right you will see alot more artist realise its going to be more profitable not to sign with the label thats going to take your rights when you sign, since the copyright holder will be the one getting paid . all i can say to the ones that are already slaves to the labels is to bad you had a chance to speak up and now you get what you deserve

deserve what you get ? lol

Record companies have no right to the royalties from such a model whatsoever unless the artist/songwriter is stupid enough to sign away their copyright.
(All of them with an RIAA label do, almost without exception, so I don't expect much support from any big name artists for this.)
This model would need to cover circle "p" as well as circle "c" type. ASCAP and BMI only collect royalties for the songwriter/publisher, NOT the artist per se. If you play a cover and it gets heavy radio airplay, BMI and ASCAP don't owe you a dime.

Just something to consider.

Shmoo

"Haven't there been issues about the artists never receiving some of the royalties they were supposed to get before?"

Yes, that is more the rule than the exception. Since most of the songs have their recording rights retained by RIAA members, my guess is that the labels will keep 99% of the revenue. Therefore distribution of the revenue might need to be directed throught the licensing companies.

The EFF did a great job on this model, and I hope some form of it becomes implemented, and in a way which is fair to the artists and songwriters. With filesharing not showing any real signs of slowing down, and with the FBI now getting involved in "illegal filesharing", the stakes keep getting higher on both sides.

This solution offers a reasonable compromise, and with 60 million filesharers, it lends creedence to the saying, "What the People Want, the People Get".

I believe this paradigm would probably be quite successful. The original Napster was poised for a massive expansion just as the lawsuits were filed and judgements against them, which shut it down. A legal, open system, with a low monthly fee, would allow an explosion in file sharing to occur. More variety would result, which would be great!

I have a question. What about files shared that are not property of RIAA, MPAA or any other AA?

What if I wrote a short story and put it out there. Would some one still have to pay this fee just to download it?

How would this be accomplished? You cannot truely do it via a subscription service unless all the peer to peers sign up and then require you to register with the service. This in turn would not be fair to those who are not participating in the trading of these precious files that the AAs want us all to pay for.

I know it is early in the morning, so I hope I'm coming across the way I want to.

The RIAA don't want it because A) it loses them any form of control (They love to control yup) and B) they don't want to share any proficts with independents. They would want ALL of this money to go directly to them and not divide up amongst other independent labels/artists.

I was going to add that this is not a solution it's only a means for the RIAA and it's cronies to stay in power. I say don't support them. They need to die for the good of us all in the long run.

This is not a perfect solution (biggest concern would be divying up the proceeds in a fair way) but, as the White Paper points out, right now artists and copyright holders do not benefit DIRECTLY from P2P file sharing in a financial way. This kind of scheme would at least get some money flowing to copyright holders while legitimizing what millions are still going to do anyway.

Of course, they still need to revise copyright law. Even the White Paper alludes to this. There needs to be some recorded music in the public domain.

I dunno...
More unknown bands would get very tiny compensation compared to the Vanessa Carltons of the net. Seems kind of a ripoff for some of the artists that only get a cult following, they put their music out there and get a pittance back.
Would be harder to encourage fans to make donations to struggling bands because of the "I paid for it already" mentality.

Also, I don't think I should have to pay twice for the same media. If I have everything Chicago ever did on cassette tape, I don't want to pay even $5 a month to get the same songs again.

Every single file would have to be 100% guaranteed DRM free, I don't want to have to pay a separate fee to burn to disk (like Rhapsody).

I WOULD be excited if for $5-10 a month I could also webcast my own live radio show through some programs. I've always wanted to do that, but I can't afford to because of webcasting royalties.
("Goood Wednesday morning, it's 5 after the hour here on Heathen radio...)

Zhelton..excellent point and something I keep bringing up. Music is in no way especially privileged or more deserving of protection than writing. There are LOTS of original creative works out there that are copyrighted at the point of creation and fixation.

This may be the most reasonable solution this could all come down to. I for one would support it.

Zheldon
"I have a question. What about files shared that are not property of RIAA, MPAA or any other AA?"

I think p2p sites for this exact purpose could spring up, ie: free non-music sites, like poetry and prose sites, etc...

Lets see how much longer the riaa is going to try to maintain their losing situation, when solutions are offered on their doorstep. ~~pepe~~

godless-heathen,

You raise a good point about the 'unknown' bands, although I think it is hard to tell if the over-all impact of such a proposed collective licensing scheme would be a plus or a minus for them.

I would think that legitimizing P2P would, on balance, help many indie musicians. But of course they will still be at a disadvantage because radio will continue to be the primary vehicle for new music to get a lot of exposure. For indie music to get more exposure, one would need to ask how we can get more radio outlets available to consumers. If more broadcasting slots can be made available by the FCC, and if barriers to entry are lower for radio, then there is a better chance that consumers will be exposed to a greater variety of music.

i would pay for it but it is unlikely that the industry would go for it untill the point were they have almost been pushed out of existance at which point they might concider doing it

"Record companies have no right to the royalties from such a model whatsoever..."

Agreed. But so many things in life eventually boil down to a compromise. If this, for instance, were implemented, I'd consider buying RIAA music. Maybe...

(no drm!)

"First, artists and copyright holders deserve to be fairly compensated." Bullshit.

Why? On what basis? Artists do not deserve copensation if they are copied. They deserve to be compensated to create and to perform. Then it stops. That is the way it was for roughly 100,000 years and things worked fine.

It is amazing that half of the necessary intellectual discussion is just presumed without any debate.

Raoulduke1,

You bring up an interesting concept there. Before people start jumping against him compare it to some other art forms. Like, painting. Some one creates a painting, some one else buys it. The artist (to my very limited knowledge) is not compensated if the purchaser sells it or copies it.

This then brings me to wonder about books. How is that all setup, something like the RIAA in that the authors are paid royalties by the publishers?

$5 a month for all I could download music? I'd sign up in a heartbeat. But, alas, the (dying) powers that be (RIAA) wouldn't go for it unless they could steal that $5 a month from the artists as well.

Whoever drafted this gets my vote as visionary of the year and e-Businessman of the year.

In plain english, a phenomenal solution to the question of alternative to the current model. I would be the first on my block to sign up and I would hound all my filesharing friends to join me. This is the way it SHOULD be.

60 dollars is not a whole lot of money per year per say. (But your talking 3 billion dollars.) Then you have to take into account that it is your bandwidth that your using up. Dsl / cable downloading a song does not take to long most of the time. But I have seen it go into hours for a song. Then if your on dial up, it can take forever or you can get cut off. Will the company that you are now using. Begin to charge you for all that bandwidth that you are using. It cost them money also, and they like money. So a logical conclusion is yes. But how much, that is the question. then factor in your time, yes your time cost money. What will a mp3 song cost now?
With my hearing mp3 sound good. The same as a CD to me. But I know it is not same to you, you and yes you. You know who I mean. Right now they get 99 cents a song at 128kbs. When you come to think about it in percents. It is 10% of the a song. On a cd the cost is about 99 cents per song or more. Yes sometimes even less like 95 cents.(LOL) Does anyone see the picture here? One hundred percent or ten percent. Yes some will say there is 190/220/320/wave also. That is not the point. Where is the cost to the RIAA. ETC. Free to them, but it cost me how much now for 10 percent of a song. If you factor in everything it will cost you about 99 cent a song. Time, Bandwidth, five dollars = about 99 cents cost to you maybe more. No facts just a good guess.

Yes the artist should be paid for his or her work

Some one creates a painting, some one else buys it. The artist (to my very limited knowledge) is not compensated if the purchaser sells it or copies it.

I had to laugh at this, I know three quite popular North American artists and they are forever up to their knecks in lawyers ~~pepe~~

As I said, I really don't know. I didn't get interested in all this stuff until the RIAA started suing people. Then I started learning the truth and I am still learning.

Zheldon

Thats all right, we all seem to learn something new here everyday. Keeps me hanging around ~pepe~

"Yes the artist should be paid for his or her work"

Ok, why? It seems easy to say then back it up.

The artists who spends all of his time worriying about ways to secure royalties for work he has already been paid for is a sellout with little integrity.

as far as new and "unkown" bands are concerned. tracking software proposed in the legal brief (which I read) would keep track of all titles. A proposed new artist could register his song title and receive a small cut of the revenue.

60 bucks a year isnt the most horrid thing in the world. While what the industry is doing right now is inexcusable, the public must be ready to compromise to placate what little concerns are actually legitimate.

""$5 a month for all I could download music? I'd sign up in a heartbeat. But, alas, the (dying) powers that be (RIAA) wouldn't go for it unless they could steal that $5 a month from the artists as well.""

The RIAA DID GO FOR IT, but they were the ONLY ones who went for it and people sued because somebody could subpoena the RIAA and get their amnesty list, then go off persecuting members of their program for grabbing NON RIAA music.

WOW!

Makes a lot of sense to me. The fact that something similar already exists and is working to a certain degree (always room for improvement to ensure fairness for artists) suggests that it's not far fetched at all.

At US$60 dollars a year that's about 2.5 CDs worth of music (where I live anyway). To tell you the truth I don't think I've ever bought that many CDs in a year (they were always a luxury I couldn't afford) but I would concede that since p2p my interest in music has hit the stratosphere and I would buy at least that much now if I wasn't boycotting.

Even after downloading and paying this fee I would still buy certain CDs I just had to have.

For example, my current "will buy when suing stops" list includes:
Daft Punk - Discovery
Avril Lavigne - Let Go
ABBA Gold (don't laugh - 100% good songs)
Creed - Weathered
Foo Fighters - One By One (actually I think this is an independent release)
Travis - The Invisible Band
Silverchair - Diorama
Zero 7 - Simple Things
Air - Moon Safari
Audioslave - Self titled
Lenny Kravitz - Greatest Hits
Rammstein - Sehnsucht
Simon & Garfunkel - Greatest Hits
The Best of Tchaikovsky

- There's more but I don't think I could afford anymore than that. The longer this suing continues the more my list grows, and the bigger the lump sum cost will be at the other end - I may have to start a trust fund or something soon just cover it.

Another thing that gives me hope something like this will eventually come about is if you look back to what happened with Henry Ford trying to get a cheap affordable car out to the public and the seldon patent dispute. Eventually affordability won out and everyone drives a car these days. Does anyone think music is affordable atm? Our brains can absorb far more music than our wallet can for sure. With a model like this unlimited legal music is at all our finger tips - exciting just thinking about it. I just can't imagine it doing anything but exploding musics popularity to ungodly heights all over the world.

Isn't something like this proposal already in effect and working quite well for blank CDs?

My only concern would be who controls the distribution of the money (history shows that the record industry certainly can't be trusted)? I'd imagine they'd have to be a BigChampagne type company monitoring p2p traffic and making public their results every month, and a seperate independent body doing the same thing to test the accuracy of those figures.

Regardless, it's a realistic proposal based on current working systems and I hope something comes of it eventually, because let's face it, the artists are making vary little despite the interest in music generated by the p2p revolution being high.

I don't think that free downloading is going to stop even if both sides of the table (riaa and other dowloaders) agree to paying $5 for a month of music. i don't want to play for music. i download, i hear it, if i really like it i go out and buy it.

b1, nice list there. may I suggest you check out Air's Premiers Symptomes album. It is only an EP, but I like it better than Moon Safari. just a thought.

If they instituted such a plan, I'd sign up for a couple of months, and download like mad. Then I'd quit, sit back, and enjoy the fruits of my downloading for many, many moons before signing up for more tunes again. After all, they are only crappy MP3s, unless they'd let us start sharing WAV files under such a scheme.

I think the idea is that the $5 a month is incorporated invisibly into your ISP bill, just like there's a tax on blank CDs that no-one notices. I don't think $5 is unreasonable no matter how much you download. It's a lot cheaper than buying into CDs, but that's fair because the quality is not optimal. If you were tone deaf and had no interest in music you could opt out but get into trouble if you d/l. I don't think anyone could honestly take the moral high ground if they got caught and weren't willing to pay just $5 a month, depending of course on how the money was distributed and how transparent the whole process was.

The bottom line is that atm this suing campaign is negative and regressive and small minded. It's not going to solve anything. It'll push sharing under ground for a period until the filesharing generation comes into power and something like this proposal is implimented anyway.

The genie is well and truly out of the bottle and cannot be put back in again. We've had a taste of the celestial jukebox and no matter how the RIAA trys to spin-doctor it back in again we will never again accept the high price, low distribution volume model of the past.

So wake up RIAA. Personally I think the world would definately be far better off without the big 5. I mean the people they hire to head these organisations are just dodgy semi-crim types; not an altruistic idealistic one among them; they just scream "show me the money" every time they open their mouth - it's sickening.

EFF did a great job if only the labels would impliment this I would be in line to pay minus the ( DRM ) but of course this would be next to dreaming it would happen.

I already pointed out the problems of CL, but heres the summery:

1. Too many pieces of the pie. The labels, the studios, TV program creators, game and software companies...all would want a cut.

2. International problems. When you download or upload in the US, the other end could be anywhere in the world. If the US allowed free p2p usage, all the other countries music industry represensitives would point out it was effectively allowing people to transmit files to people elsewhere.

3. Corporate culture. The labels sell plastic discs. They have been selling plastic discs since long before all the current workers and management went into the industry. Even the legal download sites use DRM to turn a computer file into something with the properties of a plastic disc. Not only that, but half of them dont know how to turn a computer on. They are not going to change without one really big fight.

4. Lack of control. Labels and, to an even greater extent, studios like to control where their content is used. Which radio stations get to play, which date should it be released in each region. Movies go even further with their regioning system. With p2p, content is either available or its not. That would screw up a lot of business plans.

"EFF did a great job if only the labels would impliment this I would be in line to pay minus the ( DRM ) but of course this would be next to dreaming it would happen."

Be careful how you word things nitedreamer, I am SURE you don't want the labels to be the ones doing the implementing... that job belongs to the PUBLIC (via the Copyright Office or a new agency that WE THE PEOPLE create.)
It was, after all, WE THE PEOPLE who came up with the concept of "copyright" in the first place, granting (as an insentive to create) a limited monopoly to the creator of intellectual works. By nature, intellectual works are PUBLIC DOMAIN.

The labels (RIAA) have already distorted our copyright laws far too much ...for their sole benefit already, we don't want them mucking this up also.

Everyone, repeat after me:

WE THE PEOPLE should be the ones to "implement" a voluntary compulsary licensing model... NOT the fucking industry. Intellectual works are by nature PUBLIC DOMAIN, we only grant the creators a TEMPORARY monopoly of the work they create to get them to create more. It is NOT the "industrys" right or priviledge to write the laws about things in the public domain!

I can shout till I am blue in the face...
does NO GOOD...
take a look at the newer threads on this issue above

sigh

Shmoo