Why A Copyright Levy ('Music Tax') Is A Bad Idea: Unnecessary Attempt To Retain Old Power Structures
from the creative-destruction dept
While a variety of folks have, over the years, suggested some form of a "private copying levy" or "internet levy" to tax users and hand it over to folks in the entertainment industry to distribute, we've spent a lot of time explaining why this is a terrible idea. The key point that we've explained is that this creates a distorted market that actually harms new business models, by driving (by taxation) money from those models right back into the old industry types who refuse to innovate. Rick Falkvinge has now taken a stab at exploring the issue and appears to agree, noting that the whole thing is an attempt to keep the old structures of the industry in power, to block the new centers of power (which often come directly from the artists):
It is about a previous elite -- bordering on nobility -- which has lost its privileges, an elite which has been replaced by indie artists of all genres and new distribution methods, and where this elite is seeking to restore its former status of special by an ability to tax the public.
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Who gets the money?
Any proponent of a media collection tax should lay out a detailed plan up front describing how the money will be distributed.
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Re: Who gets the money?
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Re: Who gets the money?
This has always been the sticking point with me. If I have a tax taken from me because I listen to an independent band, I want it to go to that band, not whatever X Factor winner happens to get dragged in front of the cameras that year, or whatever tabloid-baiting moron is releasing a new single that week. Until accuracy can be guaranteed (and the music industry has a pathetic record with this), no dice.
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assumes everyone is a criminal
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I am actually for this tax...
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Re: I am actually for this tax...
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Can't download everything, but there's more stuff than I have time to watch...
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Re: I am actually for this tax...
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Re: I am actually for this tax...
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Re: I am actually for this tax...
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Re: I am actually for this tax...
If they don't want it, why should they have to pay for it?
I'm a struggling independent artist who does a chunk of my work online. Is it fair that I should have to pay a levy to the big, successful, established artists, just to be able to do my own work?
Let the failed ideas fail.
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Re: I am actually for this tax...
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*we all know that the **AA would never agree that the tax would allow legal downloads of anything. Double dip for even more money!
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Why???
Once the process begins, each new broadband tax will just get easier to pass. The government will take their cut and the industry organizations will take theirs, and the price of broadband will steadily increase to the highest point that the market can bear.
And don't think that the telcos and cable companies will not want their piece of the pie for any tax that they are billing their customers.
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So...
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There are a couple, they call them the Los Angeles River and its tributaries...you've seen them on TV or in the movies before...they have cement banks and a cement floor, and there is usually a very small stream running through them, and sometimes they have cars chasing each other at high speed through them. We call them flood channels. However, they might not work well if you want to put them on a boat first, and then dump them into the river from that boat.
Los Angeles is pretty much a desert, and Hollywood is in Los Angeles. But during the spring time the flood channels get a little deeper due to melting ice in the Santa Monica and San Gabriel mountains.
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Alcatraz is in San Fransisco, about 500 mi north of Hollywood...but it would certainly be a good place to put them. Only the tourists would see them, but luckily they wouldn't have to hear them.
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"..Copyright Levy ('Music Tax') Is A Bad Idea"
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The term we had for them back in the 'Home Taping is Killing Music' days is 'Fucking Fuckers'. Still appropriate 30 years on.
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Yeah but...
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Re: Yeah but...
For example, for $100, you can get decent sound-sampling software. For the sound producer, they have the experience to leverage that into something that sounds dramatically better than an amateur would.
IT's not that the labels don't deserve to get paid, so much as they need to actually work for it.
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This is certainly not in the interest of society, this is certainly not in the interest of a free market, this is certainly not in the interest of capitalism, so what a f'ing levy(tax) is for?
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Music levy
Suppose that someone proposed that a union be allowed to levy a tax on all potential users of the union offerings, say, electrical work, and that they distribute it to the workers (which would result in massive salaries for the union bosses and no real benefit for the workers, but I digress).
People would be outraged at such an idea - but the only difference is electrical work is useful, and music is purely for entertainment (if any).
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Music Taxes
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