Recording Industry’s Next Target: iPod - Going After More Than the iPod
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In theory, charging for players could be an entry point for the RIAA to accept downloading. I’ll admit that the idea of paying an extra mp3 player fee makes some sense, and there’s merit to it. If the original CD media prices or downloading restrictions were reduced or absolved, the idea would be great. Taking the idea that customers are paying to pirate the music one step further, you could pay exorbitant up-front fees for a media player but then have full and legal access to any music on the internet. The most burning problem with this is that the fee, like current blank media levies, would only really subsidize the most popular artists. Recording companies would send whatever money remains after it trickles through their own paychecks to their biggest stars. Local artists, companies and bands not in the RIAA would see none of it. Even smaller bands that are in the RIAA would be lucky to see a dime of it.
There’s also no indication that mp3 player levies will help restructure how music is sold. As companies try to use legislation for more profit, they never seem to actually change their old, broken business model. Music is still sold and marketed primarily in CD format without any DRM, and they continue to release unprotected recordings even as they whine about piracy. This isn’t to say that using unsecured recordings and trusting consumers is necessarily wrong. But when they don’t take part in the innovation of the industry, instead turning around and trying to prevent advancement by suing their own customers who leave songs shared or charging everyone for compensation of losses that are more or less their fault, something is awry. Their work is punishing innovation instead of directing or embracing it, trying to choke mp3 player sales by charging pirates and non-pirates alike for their losses.
There is something seriously wrong with these approaches. Soon you could see blank media taxes on new hard drives. Germany already has a form of this. After all, mp3 players like the DMC Xclef (http://www.digmind.com/store/index_500.html) can be bought without any drive. Customers can buy an mp3 player with no storage, then buy a laptop hard drive and stick it in. Would the government really allow this sort of workaround, or would they start putting special taxes on hard drives that can be used in mp3 players and additionally provide space for pirated mp3s on computers? There are also mp3 players that use removable media, such as camera/flash memory, that would give mp3 players extra space. So perhaps camera/flash memory would be added to the list of taxable media. By those standards, if you bought a digital camera you could end up paying that fee because at some point you may remove that memory stick and put it into an mp3 player (or even use the camera as removable storage for mp3s). Going back to the situation in Canada, the recording industry has already or is trying to impose taxes on all these types of storage: blank tapes, blank CDs, blank DVDs, flash memory, hard drives, mp3 players, etc.
Why not tax the bandwidth that internet users suck up as well? Sure, it will hurt businesses with web servers, gamers connecting to high-speed games, and again those people already paying for downloads on iTunes or similar services like eMusic, but the principle is the same. Levy everyone related and unrelated to illegal use. The record companies will probably be satisfied whether levies inhibit the mp3 format and hurt electronics companies in general or just allow them to make money without moving their products to a new medium and improving them.
If these ridiculous taxes don’t get blocked by the European Commission, it’s not unreasonable to think it they will spread to other countries. The next time you buy computer storage space of any kind, it could carry an extra charge to pad fat cats’ pockets because somebody at some point in time might use part of that particular drive to hold a pirated song. After all, everyone is responsible for making sure that wealthy, bloated, stagnant organizations get their cut, right?
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