# Three Major Record Labels Join the 'Choruss'



## RootbeaR (Dec 9, 2006)

"U.S. universities are getting a glimpse at a plan that would build a small music-royalty fee into the tuition payments they receive from students. If successful, the model  proposed by digital music strategist Jim Griffin on behalf of Warner Music Group  could be expanded to make ISPs the collector of such micropayments, eliminating some of the most irksome and contentious issues dividing the music industry and its customers...

...A Wired.com poll showed that approximately 70 percent of readers would pay $10/month for legal access to all of the music on the internet, and we understand that Choruss would call for a significantly lower fees than that. Its detractors might be underestimating the consumer appeal of an inexpensive, unlimited and unrestricted music network."
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/12/warner-music-gr.html

"Is The RIAA Afraid to Sue Harvard Students?
The RIAA sued its way into the new year, issuing 407 pre-litigation letters to students at 18 colleges and universities, including Bowdoin, Duke, MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UConn, and UCLA...
...Those professors are just way too sharp. They say things like, "there are seven parts of the answer to your question; I'm going to take the fourth part first -- here's why."...
...And pretty much across the board, they supported online innovation while continually questioning the utility of copyright. Many of them see today's copyright laws as a far cry from what the founding fathers intended when they set the term to expire after 14 years (today's copyright term lasts 95 years after a work's publication by a corporation).
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/01/is-the-riaa-afr.html


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Gee, I'd pay $10/mo for unlimited access to all the music on the Internet!  I have a 20mbit/sec pipe, I could fill a lot of hard disks!


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## RootbeaR (Dec 9, 2006)

JohnWill said:


> Gee, I'd pay $10/mo for unlimited access to all the music on the Internet!  I have a 20mbit/sec pipe, I could fill a lot of hard disks!


Yes, I'd say the other thirty % just don't want music.


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## RootbeaR (Dec 9, 2006)

Turns out it would be mandatory, whether you want music or not.

"Techdirt's Mike Masnick On Why a Music Tax Is a Mistake

Yes, the industry gets upset when anyone calls this a "tax" so I'll use the "voluntary license" term, even though tax is much more accurate. A true voluntary license wouldn't require everyone having a certain provider to opt-in, but that's exactly what this plan would require. In fact, as the slides indicate, eventually it would basically require all ISPs to "opt-in" forcing all of their members to "opt-in." Suddenly, everyone has to pay. That's not a voluntary license. It's a tax.

However, even if we step back and pretend it's really a voluntary license, and even if we grant the premise that all record labels sign up for this plan, you've still created a mess that doesn't help anyone. First, you have to set up a huge bureaucracy to manage this process  and it is quite a process. You need someone to monitor everything that's happening online to determine whose music is actually being shared and played. You have to somehow create methods to accurately determine  from the biggest to the smallest  who actually deserves payment. And, if you don't think that process won't be gamed, you apparently just got on the internet in the last year. As soon as there's the ability to get paid out just because more people are sharing your music, just watch the games that folks take to make sure they get a larger cut. The system will punish honest artists, and reward the scammers."
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/12/techdirts-mike.html


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I agree that this is really a tax. I'm part of the ones that would benefit, not like the huge tax we're going to get with all the bailouts where I won't benefit!


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## Cian (Dec 4, 2008)

This idea does sound like a tax - but even more indiscriminate than taxes which are generally paid by beneficiaries - income tax is based on income, road tax is based on having a car, sales tax is levied on sales, etc.

It seems obvious to me that the ISPs are the natural gatekeepers of the internet and that's the point at which we should pay for our music, photos and other copyrighted material (if we all paid according to our usage it would be a) fair, b) cheap, and c) reward creators. It's the role of government to implement a fair solution overriding the bleating pirates and monopolistic corporates alike.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Well, I'm not sure I want government involved, look at how well they're handling the financial crisis!


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