RIAA Now Open to "You Must Be a Criminal" Tax on ISP Fees

This certainly isn’t the first time it’s been proposed, but it appears that the RIAA is potentially warming up to the idea of a “music surcharge” that would have ISPs pay $5 a month in order to allow anyone to share music online. Just a month ago, we were discussing why this is a bad idea. First, it’s effectively treating everyone as a criminal and forcing those who don’t download or share music to subsidize everyone who does. Second, and much more importantly, it’s not necessary. If there’s anything that the past five years (and the past year especially) have taught us, it’s that there are many different ways for musicians to make money without requiring the government to step in and set up a business model for them. In other words, there’s no compelling need for such a mandated system. Third, once you do this, it opens up additional questions from other industries. Will the government need to set up laws that prop up their business models as well?

Read the rest of this post


comments so far. Add yours.

  • Ned McHugh

    I think this is a good idea. But let’s not forget the others who are suffer from piracy. There are the movie studios; surely they should be compensated, so add $5. The software companies suffered piracy long before the record companies, so add $5. What about television studios, they have lost advertising revenue to piracy, add $5. In reality why limit it to just the suffering musical artists? Why not include long suffering writers? Newspapers have lost revenue from lost subscriptions to online versions (advertising does not account for all the money lost), so add $5. I am sure book publishers have also lost money to projects like Google’s Print Library Project (while not strictly piracy it surely affects their bottom line), so add $5.

    The reality of the music industries proposal is it is about trying to legislate the propping up of a failing industry. Music is just another form of entertainment media and now has to compete much more intensely. Interesting how the video game industry that has suffered piracy longer has managed to flourish during the same period.

About Voices

This is a section of the AllThingsD Web site featuring posts that have been curated from around the Web: pieces we’ve read, discussions we’ve followed, stuff we like. Five posts are included here each weekday, but only the headline and the first two sentences. We link to the original site for the rest. The section is explicitly labeled, so it’s clear that content comes “from other Web sites.”

We also solicit original full-length posts and accept some unsolicited submissions. Voices is edited by Beth Callaghan.

Dive Into Media

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »