Home
Marcel Weiss's Library tagged → View Popular
Time To Scrap All Music Industry Licensing Schemes | Techdirt
-
It's impossible to be a legal innovator in online music these days. No matter what you do, you will run afoul of some kind of music licensing issue. That's because of the way that copyright law is designed. Basically, each time some new technology comes along that doesn't fit with the way copyright law used to work, the copyright holders run to Congress and demand yet another new "right" to be included in copyright -- and anyone who wants to do anything has to now pay for yet another license to cover that right. The end result is a comical house of cards that no one can actually figure out
-
We've built a copyright system by having politicians incorrectly accept the screaming complaints of legacy industries every time some new technology comes along. So they add another layer of complexity to that house of cards, and we've now reached the point where it's impossible to innovate legally -- and even doing basic creativity puts you at significant risk. Yet, there's ample evidence that none of this is actually needed for musicians to make a living making music. It's time to recognize this and look to just wipe out all of these unnecessary legacy artifacts of a dead system, and clear the decks to let real innovation thrive.
Universal Apparently Contemplating Blanket Music Licenses for ISPs | Listening Post from Wired.com
-
There are two clear problems with this plan, both involving parties
being forced to opt in to the system. First, it would charge all
of an ISP's subscribers for accessing the music even if they don't want
it and aren't downloading it. Second, a forced
opt-in organization like SoundExchange would have to administer the
system for all artists and labels; otherwise rights holders and ISPs
would need to negotiate a near infinite number of deals in order to
offer the 100% catalog coverage consumers would demand for their monthly fee.
The Music Industry’s Last Stand Will Be A Music Tax
-
Music Taxes Will Kill Music Innovation
Forcing people to buy music whether they want to or not is not a solution to this problem. The incentives created by such a system are perverse - guaranteed revenue and guaranteed profits will remove any incentive to innovate and serve niche markets. It will be the death of music.
Music industry revenues will be a set size, regardless of the quality or type of music they release. Incentives to innovate will evaporate. There will only be competition for market share, with no attempt to build the size of market or serve less-popular niches. Forget labels building new brands and encouraging early artists to succeed - they’ll bleed existing big names for all they are worth and work hard to keep anything new - labels, artists, and songwriters - out of the market. New entrants just means more competition for a static amount of money. Collusion by existing players will run rampant.
Soon labels will complain that revenues aren’t high enough to sustain their businesses, and demand a higher tax. It will go up, but it will never go down.
As I said before, Asking the government to prop up a dying industry is always (always) a bad idea. In this case, it is a monumentally stupid, dangerous, and bad idea.
Selected Tags
Related Tags
Sponsored Links
Diigo is about better ways to research, share and collaborate on information. Learn more »
Join Diigo