By Gum, Someone Will Pay For This! - This has been the cry of the recording industry ... for decades (remember how cassette recording was going to destroy the music industry ... 20 years ago?). Now, they want a chunk of another industry’s revenue stream.
“Music Exec: ISPs Must Pay Up for Music-Swapping”; “A top music executive said on Saturday that telecommunications companies and Internet service providers (ISPs) will be asked to pay up for giving their customers access to free song-swapping sites. ‘We will hold ISPs more accountable,’ said Hillary Rosen, chairman and CEO the Recording Industry Association of America, in her keynote speech at the Midem music conference on the French Riviera. ‘Let’s face it. They know there’s a lot of demand for broadband simply because of the availability (of file-sharing),’ Rosen said.”
I hear that cell phones are commonly used by drug dealers (and terrorists) in their illegal acts. I’m betting the cell service providers know this. Are they therefore responsible for those acts, and obligated to pay some kind of income penalty as a result?
Of course not. They are what’s known as a common carrier. They sell you phone service. What you do with it is up to you, and following all applicable laws is your responsibility. For example, I have a broadband connection, but I don’t engage in file sharing, of music, movies, or software. Yet, under Rosen’s “proposal,” I would have to pay. Why?
“Rosen suggested one possible scenario for recouping lost sales from online piracy would be to impose a type of fee on ISPs that could be passed on to their customers who frequent these file-swapping services.”
Ah, not just broadband users. The fee could be passed on to customers of all types, including those with broadband connections they use legally, and even dial up users who have no interest at all in downloading huge files. Under Rosen’s “proposal,” all of us connected to the Internet could end up paying an “extra fee” for the actions of a few, who may or may not have any impact at all on music sales.
Sounds fair to me. I love subsidizing an industry that has proved too dense in structure and intelligence to take advantage of the economic opportunities made possible by technology. Maybe I can refuse to make the transition from film to digital, and find some innocent bystanders to charge for my resulting loss in income. Yeah, that would be fair.
“What you do with it is up to you, and following all applicable laws is your responsibility.”
I agree. Same with guns, smokes and booze. Hold the users responsible. Just goes to show that everyone is looking to cash in on corporations (even other corporations).