UK Consumers To Pay For Online Piracy 300
Wowsers writes "An article in The Times states that UK consumers will be hit with an estimated £500m ($800m US) bill to tackle online piracy. The record and film industries have managed to convince the government to get consumers to pay for their perceived losses. Meanwhile they have refused to move with the times, and change their business models. Other businesses have adapted and been successful, but the film and record industries refuse to do so. Surely they should not add another stealth tax to all consumers."
This makes my day. (Score:4, Interesting)
I just wonder... (Score:3, Interesting)
How much of this money will the artist see? Wouldn't suprise me if it was zero. Still, the real losses are worth $0 too so it's just another industry bailout in an industry posting record profits.
Re:Not quite.. (Score:1, Interesting)
Any resource with a price tag is subjected to the market force. Since law and govt policy is something that can be purchased, there is a market for that. I hate to say it but it seems that the recording "industry" is simply a winner of that market, for now.
And to reply to your sig, the "job" IS the needed product, just not one needed by you and me, whose need doesn't matter anyway.
This would make me so reluctant to buy music (Score:2, Interesting)
Seriously, if I were in the UK, spending money on music at all would feel like being double-charged after this fiasco. I'd feel I'd already "paid" for it through taxes. The irony is that the money will be wasted on punitive measures, so the industry won't even profit from it - and if it causes music sales to drop, they will be even worse off.
I honestly suspect that normally music piracy encourages more music sales, not less. But now the industry has managed to shoot even that in the foot.
Think of the opportunities! (Score:1, Interesting)
If laws like this are put to pass, think of the opportunities for various other business models!
"I published a shareware program which includes a payment of $10 after 30 days of use. This is not really enforced or even nagged on about. The software has had 200k downloads and 20 people have actually paid for it." => lost revenues $1999980 => get payment from government.
Or FLOSS-style: "Our team developed a popular webserver/database which we distribute for free, only getting revenue from support contracts. 50M downloads, yet only 2k acquire a $2000 yearly support contract." => lost revenues $99.996G => drive government to bankruptcy.
Or even: "I put up a stand to sell lemonade to passing people. I had $2 worth of soda, enough to serve 20 people, $0.5 each. Yet no-one bought anything (-10C weather might have had something to do with it). Instead they bought lemonade from the nearby megamart." => lost revenues $8 => get pocket money from the government.
This law also solves the classic underpants-gnome problem: 1) Bank on a failing business model, 2) ??? => Make the government pay for your failure, 3) Profit!
Re:I struggle to understand their basis for argume (Score:5, Interesting)
One is the opportunistic thief that intends to merely take a copy of a product for their own use, the other is the opportunistic thief that wishes not only to copy your product but also wishes to make money from it.
The latter group sounds like it includes Sony, which has taken Idol outtakes and made albums that they don't feel obligated to pay the performer for their efforts. Sony also still owes the Bay City Rollers about $60 million from the 70s, which they haven't paid because Sony "lost" the original contract and isn't sure how to pay it out -- so they've kept it for 30 years. Then there is the list of 300,000 songs that all the majors put on compilation albums over the last couple of decades and never bothered to pay royalties on.
Now decide for yourself which is the actual pirate?
Re:Doesnt this make Pirated stuff, now free to all (Score:2, Interesting)
If you read TFA they actually want to spend the money on trying to chase people who pirate. So it's not officially to "pay for the music", it's to pay for punitive measures - so the music industry won't make any money out of it unless this strategy is effective in increasing sales (which I seriously doubt).
So in the eyes of the recording industry and the government, no, they're not going to be any happier about piracy or consider it paid for. In the eyes of the public being "taxed for piracy", maybe - I would not be at all surprised if piracy increased as a result of this bill.
I'd be happier if they did tax directly to support free music downloads. This money is a sheer waste. If only we could have an evil recording industry, instead of a stupid one... surely enlightened self-interest couldn't be as bad as what we have now.
Re:Obligatory Heinlein quote (Score:3, Interesting)
Soap, ballot, ammo. So are you guys in the UK on ammo yet? Pretty goddamn close here in the US (for me anyway).
I'm not very excited about this Bill precisely because we're coming up to a general election which the incumbents are unlikely to win. At that point this Bill will be dropped (because it's associated with the previous administration) and we'll be back to square one, and *everyone* knows it. Think instead about it being there to help secure a directorship at a media company or two for outgoing politicians for the duration of the next parliament...
Re: ding (Score:1, Interesting)
ding ding ding!
were it not for illegal downloads, I wouldn't have come across, say, Russian popular music--or at least I wouldn't have been able to get my hands on it. artists like Kolibri () and Zemfira (Z) would've completely passed my radar.
now, it's another thing if ordering cds or buying mp3s from them helps them much...
Re:Obligatory Heinlein quote (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This makes my day. (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems UK residents have just payed for allot of content. I hope they download it.
Re:true (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't come with that crap like: oh but otherwise I wouldn't have bought it anyway.. You watched it, so you owe them money, even though you might have found it crap...
Sorry, but you don't get to withhold arguments from the rebuttal.
The true "loss" that the industry suffers from piracy is the total they would earn if piracy did not exist at all, minus what they earned in reality; this magical "you watched it you owe them" concept doesn't apply to actual losses. The simple fact of the matter is that not every download would have translated into a sale without piracy. Be it a poor college student who cannot afford to purchase the same quantity of movies they download, or someone who's already purchased a copy, and is downloading a copy for convenience, or even a person who, should piracy not be an option, would buy a USED copy (meaning no money from that purchase goes to the movie industry), not every one would buy a brand new copy.
But don't confuse this with a defense of piracy; I believe quite strongly that people should be compensated for their work. I just believe a little more strongly that the entertainment industry's conduct towards it's customer base has been morally reprehensible, ie using scare tactics against innocent people because they're convinced that their half-assed unlicensed investigations are accurate. Not to mention to absurdity of decrying piracy as "killing the industry" while reaping record profits, all the while begging the government for "fixes" that erode the public's rights and cost innocent people money. This isn't even mentioning the outright fraud committed within the industry itself (do a search for "Hollywood accounting" if you want to know why most of the top grossing movies in history have either "barely made a profit", or in some cases made a "loss").
I will spell it out clearly, just for those of you who haven't caught on yet: this isn't about them recouping their supposed losses. This is about them raping our rights and making more money, any way they can.
Re:This makes my day. (Score:3, Interesting)
They assume that artists selling the most are also being copied the most, so they get the greatest part. Or so they say, because the allocation weights are kept as business secrets, so nobody really knows how much artists really get. They simply get "something" and have to be fine with that.
Also (surprise, surprise) the private encashment companies keep a hefty processing fee for themselves.
As basically any other country, the Germans are simply too dumb and too comfortable to break out of the same media political party complex. The media supports the big parties politically, the big parties support the business models of the media. It sucks big time, but theres nothing you can do about it when the other 80 Million people dont care.
Re:tax? (Score:4, Interesting)
So are seedboxes going to cause entire data centers or hosting providers to be disconnected? Users in the closed tracker communities pay for seedboxes at remote hosting facilities to help boost speeds and their ratio and they could single handily cause down time or disruption to 1000s of users if this laws consequences was applied to them.
My guess is that if this law goes through then seedboxes would become even more popular. Seed from the remote box, and VPN between the box and the home user. It has to be a much safer option already... bandwidth is cheap and disk space is always getting cheaper.
What about public WiFi projects and airports, hotels etc? As usual there are some fringe cases where this law just doesn't work.
From a staunch anti-piracy supporter... (Score:3, Interesting)
How should they change the business model? (Score:2, Interesting)
So how should they "change their business model to move with the times?" And what other industry similar to music has already done this? People say all the time that the music industry is "just going to have to change their business model."
Ok ... so HOW?
I'm seriously looking for input and ideas here.
Re:This makes my day. (Score:2, Interesting)