what happens if SOPA passes?

everyone who uses the internet pays a tax? levied by whom? and given to the government? who disburses it to... content producers/copyright holders? ASCAP? man, what could go wrong?

assuming all those entities weren't corrupt as hell, it could work

Well yeah, lets just ignore those pesky realities.

that strategy's worked pretty well for the music business

i think the idea itself is corrupt as hell. just to have an email account and surf the web, my mom has to pay a tax that gets directed to the bronfman family, just because napster exists?

re: the "Canadian solution", the tax gets distributed according to who has the most sales. This sucks. Every blank disc you buy, you are subsidising Nickelback.
Most sales does not necessarily equal most pirated. Also, fuck you Canadian government for charging artists who buy blank media in order to duplicate and distribute their OWN music.

she has to pay taxes for lots of other things that don't benefit her goole. including some art programs.

lol Nickelback's continued existence now makes sense

my mom has gone to see every federally funded art object within 750 miles of her doorstep

I don't nec. think it should be levied on internet users but I do think that ultimately national funding for art is prob gonna be the long-long-term answer to 'how do we pay artists' / 'are there benefits to having a large art economy that don't get reflected w/ free market pricing'

i think the idea itself is corrupt as hell. just to have an email account and surf the web, my mom has to pay a tax that gets directed to the bronfman family, just because napster exists?

yes, and I have to fund my local school's music program even though I don't have kids. I mean I get this is what everybody is going to say, but the amount of people who actually just use the internet to surf the web and get email is getting pretty low isn't it? Even my grandma is obsessed with YouTube these days.

right, plus we're headed toward a future where things are based on "cloud" technology and storage is essentially infinite.

"Sorry we went out of business and lost all your stuff forever when our servers shut down, sucks to be you!"

yeah I'm more concerned about my apt burning down than amazon servers suddenly disappearing

everytime someone downloads an album the government should charge nickelback a dollar.

Even my grandma is obsessed with YouTube these days.

Yes but watching a couple YouTube videos a week is not at all similar to your 10,000 album downloader.

re: the "Canadian solution", the tax gets distributed according to who has the most sales. This sucks. Every blank disc you buy, you are subsidising Nickelback.
Most sales does not necessarily equal most pirated. Also, fuck you Canadian government for charging artists who buy blank media in order to duplicate and distribute their OWN music.

but the alternative to this is...the artists with the most sales make the most money??

seems like there's an obvious difference between paying the local district for someone else's schooling and paying license holders (or supposedly fairly-distributing agencies thereof) for someone else's presumed piracy

That's what you get for living in those urban tenements you love so much xxxxp

xxp pardon me if I'm misunderstading this but isn't SOPA kind of suggesting otherwise?

yes, the first model is worse and has led to generations of shitty school systems xp

well ok, but so what? one is a funding mechanism for a public good, the other is organized restitution for a crime being committed, by someone, somewhere...

our business is way off, must be all those downloaders!!! i've never seen numbers that are convincing about this, or even definitive.

music should be a public good and should be funded as one!

jesus even i don't agree with that.

i liked it better when it was a corrupt market run by the mob tbf.

yeah so did lots of people but technology has made that p. impossible in the long-term

and tbh I think there are industries that have been or will be even more fucked than the music biz by the same 'information distribution costs approach zero' problem. newspaper writers can't go on tour.

and tbh I think there are industries that have been or will be even more fucked than the music biz by the same 'information distribution costs approach zero' problem. newspaper writers can't go on tour.

I can't wait until the technology that allows me to steal free LED TVs from the store, then the manufacturers will just have to "adapt".

that technology exists

no u c there is technology that will make LED TV's not particularly useful. you will be able to get one for free eventually, because nobody will want them.

no u c there is technology that will make LED TV's not particularly useful. you will be able to get one for free eventually, because nobody will want them.

Is there technology to prevent iatee double posts? Such a waste of resources.

all my posts deserve multiple readings tbh

hollywood and big music are probably all for this bill, no? they can go after asian and russian pirates via the government. if i'm reading wikipedia correctly...

I can't wait until the technology that allows me to steal free LED TVs from the store, then the manufacturers will just have to "adapt".

c'mon, this isn't that hard

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5295/5465725257_a74a1a206e.jpg

now asia THERE is where you see some bigtime theft. actual real theft and not virtual theft. for ever. for decades. probably billions of dollars worth. bootleg dvd mania. they didn't need the internet to do that.

I guess my question for people who are on the other side of this debate is 'what's the alternative to a macro-level tax / some sorta national spotifyish system?' $1 a song is as arbitrary as $15 a CD and has no relation to the costs of production or the demand for the music.

again I think it's better to think of what's happening to the music industry as on the first wave of what will happen to lots of people who work in the information economy.

Well I guess thats the tough part for me because I simply DON'T have a better solution, but I'd love for one that falls somewhere between a national tax and a system that takes money away from the content creators.

is that good? no. but I don't think the best way to ensure people get paid is through creating artificial scarcity.

xp to myself

labels could be trying to set up competitors to itunes. you can find ways to technologically brake piracy instead of getting the law on your side and hating apple (all the industry seems to be able to imagine doing)

the other route is to try to sell those things that people want to have that are unreproducible, and have download codes attached. all the merch and swag sort of becomes the 'album' in this model

I don't think those are long-term solutions

the question is, what do the artists want?

here's another one: music follows classical and jazz and becomes a niche thing supported by enthusiasts and a few gov't/ngo grant institutions and most other people quit giving a shit unless its on tv

the only solution for labels and artists are well-organized subscription services like itunes. a one-stop shop for people. itunes makes money, right? you have to corral people. left to their own devices, they'll just surf around and nab things where they can for free.

seems more realistic!

xp

yes, people will suddenly stop liking music. huh?

yeah, the whole "less and less people care about music because look at the numbers" argument is weird to me. billions of people will always listen to music and lots of it, whether or not it remains a billion dollar industry.

people suddenly stopped going to the movies 5x a week, things do change

how much did people love music before the radio era of the 30s? or the single era of the 50s or album era of the 60s? none of this has ever been about what is natural or about what people like