The Recording Industry Loses One...

It's about bloody time. With the recording industry running about trying to tax everything that could be used for storing a song, one of our courts finally has called bullshit on the ever expanding levies imposed on the assumption that users are all pirating recordings.

Traditionally, levies have been applied to products such as blank tapes in order to compensate the recording industry for any duplicates made on those tapes.

But analysts noted that MP3 players act as both the medium and the playing device and such a levy would be the equivalent of taxing both the blank tape and the tape recorder.

Analysts also noted the levy assumes that people are not paying for the music they store on their devices.

I object to those levies on general principles - starting with the fact I resent the fact that they are essentially a "prepaid speeding ticket". Frankly, punishing or suing your market is a great way to lose markets entirely. It's long past time for the recording industry to "wake up and smell the coffee" - the days of making vast amounts of money by being the "only game in town" for music recording and distribution are past - long past. Time to figure out some new ways to compete in a changing marketplace - like any other business has to do when the competitive environment changes.

The Dishonesty Of Recording Industry Statistics

With rumors flying in Canada that we will have a new copyright law before the house of commons in the next few weeks, it's perhaps interesting to see the logic (or lack of it) from the various members of the recording industry in Canada.

The Canadian songwriters guild proposed that our internet access accounts should be levied a flat fee of $5 or so per month for the privilege of downloading music. The CBC interviewed some nitwit from the organization making this proposal, and he made the bald statement that "70% of internet traffic is downloads".

Superficially, this may in fact be true. When you open a web page, and a pile of graphics are on that page - or even raw text, triggers a series of downloads from the host server to your desktop. Sure, 70% of the traffic is downloads using measurements like that. How much of that 70% are "illegitimate" copying of music or video content?

I know myself, I download relatively little, if any music - and what little I do download tends to come from legitimate, legal sources that I already pay for! I also download some software - all of it "Open Source" and perfectly legitimate. So...the question that comes to my mind is this - why should I pay these twits money for the privilege of something I don't even do? I already pay these bastards every time I purchase a hard drive or other recordable media.

The notion of an "across the board levy" is nothing more than a form of taxation - and it is one that I resent. While the government legally has the right to levy taxes, I dispute whether it has any right to levy specific taxes on behalf of an industry. Not only is it corporate welfare in the most noxious way, but it further punishes people for the supposition of wrong doing.