Music biz proposes 'iPod tax' in return for format-shift freedom

Fundamentally wrong

Format shifting fees should never exist, someones legally bought the music already and just wishes to hear it on something else, it's not the same as copying it to then sell it, that'd be illegal even if kept in the same format! Imagine if they required a new license every time you wanted to listen to something on a different stereo or if you upgraded your stereo you had to relicense it or something.

If they charge extra for the mp3 players, people who wouldve previously been able to afford to buy the music may now be too out of pocket, and be forced to pirate the same music they wouldve previously been willing to buy.

Seems to me....

the only way forward is to make all the music free, then place a tax on anything that can play music.

Job Sorted

AAARRRGGGHHHH

Between shit like this and annoying priacy adds that I can't skip when i buy the f**king DVD to the latest "thank you for not being a thief" flyer in the last DVD I bought are making me more likley to just go and download whatever i want to see/listen to.

Stagecoach proposes train tax...

As you know Stagecoach the bus company instigated a contract you agree to when travelling with their busses. Under the rules you are only allowed to go to your bus destination and nowhere else.

People have been flaunting this to the detriment of Stagecoach, and caught trains and gone elsewhere!

Stagecoach, proposed to make it legal to go on other forms of transport to other destinations, but only if everyone (even people who never use their buses, but only use the trains) pays them a tribute.

As they bus less and less people around, their profit are diminishing, and it's due to these trains! Damn these metal monsters!

Well, the CBG says no...

The Chris Business Group (MBG), an umbrella body that lists as its members organisations like the Bob Defiance Group (BDG), the Association of People Who Don't Want To Be Taxed For Music (APWDWTBTFM), proposes that there is no tax on MP3 players, and that the UK simply changes its law over fair use, to allow people to pay once and use anywhere for their own personal use.

I like this group much better, because it costs me nothing.

So if I only want to play my ripped CDs via WinAmp...

... and not through a portable device I don't have to pay.

Not that I care about music at all, but this is just a f**ked up, backward regressive tax that does nothing to address the problems of changing the music distribution model from hardware to software.

And another knee jerk reaction...

If I buy a CD and choose to copy it to my iPod then why is the iPod taxed? Why not "tax" the CD? Or rather add a levy that says I'm licenced to listen to that music in any format.

Then again, there is no condition attached to the sale of a CD that says I can only play it in a single player or location. So I can play it in the living room, in the kitchen or the bedroom. I can risk and asbo by sticking it in the old ghetto blaster and listening to it in the garden. I can listen to it in the car. I can put it in the old CD Walkman and listen to it on the train. That's six devices on which I haven't paid a tax, but should I copy the music to the iPod then suddenly I need to pay a tax?

The real problem facing the music industry is idiots suggesting this sort of unfair and unworkable legislation. The more this happens the more people will be driven away from legally purchasing music and towards pirating. The music industry will lose even more income and will lose even more money and suggest even more levies. In the end they will probably make more money from levies than from music purchases and the artists won't get a percentage of the levies. Thinking about it that could be the industry's big plan, after all they've always considered paying artists for their music to be an inconvenience and they've spent years trying to work out a way of avoiding it.

Still too lax

As a lawyer, I feel these proposals lack bite.

Consumers should have to specify the device they use to play the CD and pay to register changes (home to car etc.). Furthermore, rearranging CDs on racks or shelves should be notifiable and chargeable

With the current recession looming, worried professionals need new revenue streams

utter crap

what a load of rubbish, I thought you were paying for a license for the music, not a licesnse for that specific cd, next they'll propose we're charged for every song we can remember as it's been duplicated within the neurons in our brains

>make all the music free, then place a tax on anything that can play music.

Yeah, then I can write a few hundred crap songs and insist on a slice.

Never

What if I never, ever listen to 'their' music on my PMP? What if I only ever listen to podcasts? Do I still have to pay?

What about my mobile phone that can play MP3s? Is that going to be taxed too? In which case, we'd better petition S-E now to stop making mobiles with built in MP3 players for those of us that don't want to be taxed.

Too Slow

The music industry was basically behind the times and got caught with its pants down with the internet revolution. They're now paying for years of over indulgences and corporate wastefulness - including the many layers of middle management and the extravagant contracts given to artists... as well as the lack of investment in finding new talent.

Myspace Music is a treasure trove of up-and-coming bands; yet musical innovation in the charts has been poor for some time now. Why aren't record companies giving these plethora of bands an outlet for their music, when Apple, via Itunes, is happy to sell almost anything?

The music business

I buy cds and rip them to mp3s then my cds go in to the safe and or never used unless I get a corrupted files or loose a drive. I never have more than 1 album or song un use at a time. This is a bunch of crap that I must pay twice. And it is a reason that I research with artist are complaining and are the activist on this process and I WILL not buy or listen the their music.

Chuck

better than paying student fees to these people!

At least people with ipods play music. What scares me more is the labels thinking that all students must be sharing the cr*p music currently in the chart thefore part of the student fee is to go to the labels to support mediocre artists drug habbits.

Format Shifting etc.

There is one type of formatting shifting in the UK and that is for broadcast TV as the law was explicitly changed to allow it. However, it is only allowed for so-called time-shifting, and not making permanent, archival copies. Of course that is completely unenforceable, and it's a good job that some people ignored it or even more BBC programmes of the 1960s and 1970s would have been lost for ever due to the corporation's policy of wiping an reusing tapes.

As far as format shifting music onto MP3 players go, well it isn't explicitly allowed by law and the copyright terms on CDs are such that they do not permit any form of copying at all. That does mean that there is a breach of copyright in transferring to a PC or MP3, at least in theory. Of course the beauty (and some of the unpredictability) of common law is that this would actually have to be upheld in court and it is open to a suitably senior court to "clarify" the rules in a common-sense manner.

I actually had a deal of sympathy for the plight of many musicians, although not some of the big-names. Commercial music is a feast for famine game. A very few make obscene amounts of money, whilst most get by on scraps. In real terms recorded music fans get a vastly better deal than before; the costs of CDs are often not much more than the price of a couple of bottles of beer in a major music venue (and as everybody knows, beer is rented and not bought). They also have flexibility of where they listen and when in a way never possible before. Even a legitimately purchased CD is often copied onto several family MP3 players, PCs and the like.

The principle of a capacity-based charge for MP3 players is not necessarily wrong as such, it's the practicalities that are the problem. FIrst is who sets the price, second is what about the multi-purpose devices (there might be a case for a per-GB charge for dedicated MP3 players, but how could that be justified for hard disks which may not be used for that purpose at all). Finally, there is the little problem of distribution of the revenues - who gets them and by what formula?

In all it's a conundrum, and there are far to many people that don't recognise the real plight of many musicians and continue to think that free access to their creations is a right.

Watermarking should do it.

The problem is that format shifting and replication is precisely what the so called music industry was set up to do, but they are now entirely redundant for that purpose. Artists can easily set up their own recording studios, and consumers can easily "press" unlimited perfect copies of music. Perhaps the music biz should be paying us for doing their work for them.

With watermarking and a bit of prosecution of those who sell bootleg copies or distribute their personal copies freely, it remains for consumers to simply pay for the convenience of getting a copy when they feel the urge. In fact this can easily keep successful artists in mansions, cocaine and limos; it's just redundant "industry" execs whinging.

How about some protection for the computer business? The price we get for the same goods has fallen far, far further that the price the music biz gets for their product. I remember 33 pence (well, 6/9d) buying a single, and £17000 buying 1MB of disk storage. Today the single sells for about double, but costs nothing to make, but the storage sells for far less than one ten thousandth the original price, and still costs something to make.

@Jonb

Umm is that not the current situation with the big label music industry :)

I know nothing

From many years working in a record shop and dealing with these parasites (they are...they make their living off of someone else's ideas and talent) it is my understanding that when you buy a cd or other format what you are actually paying for is a copyright license to the music on the cd for personal use, the cd is merely the media that they use for you to obtain the items you have purchased a license for.

Therefore if I have a license I should be entitled to use the media on the cd any way I see fit as long as it is personal.

Changing the rules after the game has started? Bad music industry...go stand in the corner

as long as levy is reasonably small and money goes to artists ...

... I would support the idea. Still, outlawing format shifting was bad decision in the first place and this only goes to slightly reverse effect of that bad decision. It does not go far enough. In my personal belief format shifting is covered by fair use, thus is legal no matter what greedy corporation lawyers say. There is also issue of video formats conversion, which in next few years will raise in priority - when folks start converting their (legally purchased) HD DVD collections to Bluray Disc.

April Fool

This is an late April Fool yes? Shirley they cannot be serious? Oh wait, they are music "execs" (executable?) and so they aren't joking.

Oh well, another stupid law in the making.

some relevant links to parties directly involved

this is government side of the story http://www.ipo.gov.uk/policy-issues-gowers-flexibility.htm and this is corporate side http://www.bmr.org/cms/uploads/files/Press%20Release%2027%20-%20MBG%20Formatshifting.pdf

Copyright lasts to long

Copyright law is far to generous to the "artist". If you invent a cure for cancer you get exclusive rights for your invention for 20 years. If on the other hand someone writes a song about your invention they get exclusive rights to the song for their lifetime plus 50 years. The length of a copyright should be severely curtailed, but unfortunately this will never happen.