Report: Music downloads on your Net access tab?
Hotels tack extra charges onto your bill when you raid the minibar--or if they're really mean, when you steal towels. If a new Warner Music Group executive gets his way, your Internet service provider will be billing you each month for music downloads.
Jim Griffin, Warner's latest top-shelf hire and the former head of Geffen Music, told Portfolio.com the details of a radical new strategy to deal with the record industry's 21st-century crisis. According to Griffin's plan, to which he said Warner Music is "totally committed," a monthly fee added to an Internet service bill--say, five bucks--could give consumers unlimited access to music that they could download, copy, and share.
He estimated that this could provide as much $20 billion per year to reimburse artists and copyright holders.
Griffin did not make it clear whether this would be an opt-in service, or whether customers of an Internet service provider would ideally all be charged even if they don't plan to download music. But, he said, he hopes that it would be much bigger than Warner, with the project eventually spun into its own company.
Recent weeks have seen a number of media and technology companies toying with the idea of unlimited-access plans as they grapple with the reality that iTunes and its ilk haven't stopped rampant music piracy. And legal efforts to curtail pirated downloads often proceed at a snail's pace--it took nearly two years and immense legal pressure before BitTorrent finally shut down the TorrentSpy search engine earlier this week.
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
Canada, where blank media is taxed because it's assumed they
will be used for piracy, now this! FYI Warner, the internet is
used for far more good than evil, and all internet users aren't out
to steal from poor little struggling Warner Music.
$20 billion for the artists and record companies.....Hah! I think
the last thing this country needs right now is to see Britney
Spears in a new wig or Kanye West in a new pair of sunglasses
he flew to Europe just to buy!
RIAA companies based on the ratio of music fostered on the
public that is deemed worthy and the amount of music it deems
crap. They would have to provide an online survey for all music
published and for all the "music" that does not get a significant
vote the companies would have to pay to reduce our internet bills.
When people talk about TorrentSpy being a BitTorrent indexing site, they're referring to the BitTorrent protocol used for the files - as far as I know, there is no other link between the TorrentSpy operators and BitTorrent Inc. It'd be like saying "MP3s finally shut down the Napster search engine."
Oh well, good luck with that effort to "shut them down" considering any form of communication can be used to provide a centralized or de-centralized index of torrents. Like, usenet, IRC, email, hotline, instant messenger, website, list server, etc.. there is no way they can block the sharing of torrents and if you set your torrent client to randomly change ports how can they block the transactions? I guess you could build an open source client that masks the headers of each requires via TCP/IP to be something else, like a web-request but really it is a torrent packet request..
Totally a waist of time, instead perhaps they should focus on providing valued content and services and make it easier to buy their product then to steal it. Right now it is still way too easy to steal their product then to go through the pain of buying it legally "so I have heard" ;)
I mean if I am paying the music industry a monthly service fee on my internet bill, then it should be OK to download pirated music right? I am paying for it after all...
If I had to pay $35 per month instead of $30 just to be in the clear from pirating and copyright violations... I'd do it in a heartbeat.
I'm sure those people who are comfortable pirating and feel that "they won't get caught so why should they PAY for something they can get for free" wouldn't like it much, but seriously... if ALL the labels signed on and you could download unlimitedly, legally, quickly, and easily... why WOULDN'T you want to do it.
Personally, I always felt P2P to be slow and unreliable... BitTorrent is better and usually faster, but still unreliable at times. If, somehow (magically most likely), we could agree on a single course of action regarding music purchasing, download, burn, copying, sharing... we wouldn't be getting gouged $.99 per song.
Why would I pay $17 for an album to download it when I can go to K-Mart and get the same thing on physical media for $13? Doesn't make sense to me. I can buy the media, rip it to my machine, then I have a free frisbee.
it in pre-91), you'll find this 'later' version of decision making could
be deemed 'inappropriate'. 'Earlier' definitions could re-shape and
make recording industries move ahead on all-fronts.
Strong foundation, better future..
Also, why would I want to pay anyone $5 if I'm not interested in whatever they're offering. Don't get fooled by these people, they always start it as optional, and once they see how much more they can make and have bribed enough politicians; bam, make it mandatory because againg "we have to combat piracy so the artists can get paid for their work."
Oh, I get it. When they mean "the artists" they mean "the con-artists working for the RIAA." Now it's clear.
since, and anyone contemplating this should be slapped, or jailed.
Can you imagine if entities like this get their way, they will be
putting artificial taxes on ANYTHING they can.
What is worse, the real money they are stealing, they can hide even
easier now.
So by your logic, everyone should stop buying any form of recordable media because the RIAA taxes it.
now the only problem is determining how to create an equitable schedule and popularity tracking for artist revenue sharing.
Oh and these downloads will be infested with DRM too.
Nothing more than a crock of crap.
I am not a pirate.
Is this guy seriously telling us we have to pay TWICE for the content that we consume? Once to the service that's providing this content, and another fee "just in case" we ever get the sudden urge to torrent last week's Lost?
Remove this bozo from my sight.
ISPs should remember that customers can sue in Class Action and be just as effective as the Music industry.
demand channels. So what does this extra extortion money buy
me again?
We see right through your transparent arguments RIAA/MPAA.
You don't want to change and you really don't want to have to
supply us with anything, you think you should just get paid
because you're that righteous. Problem is you're delusional and
obsolete. They keep playing up the "money for the artists"
argument, but curiously enough never seem to pony up any
money to the artists after all these lawsuits against their own
customers.
Being on drugs doesn't make you this delusional. It's stupidity at
it's best, pure and simple. But not on the part you're thinking of,
it's not the RIAA/MPAA that's "stupid". They're counting on YOU
being stupid and buying into their lies so you can give to the
executives (who do nothing and are worth nothing to the rest of
the world). Artists will still get hosed, you get hosed, but these
crooks will have different colored mansions for each day of the
year. Sounds fair, don't it?
- Fascists
- by swamp_rat1967 March 28, 2008 10:28 AM PDT
- So, what it boils down to is we're going to force everyone online to pay for music whether they listen to it or not and whether they like it or not.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(25 Comments)Fascists.