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Music downloads may soon be part of ISP fee
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AUSTIN, Texas – While most of the 12,500 registrants at the South by Southwest Music Conference were out playing on a beautiful early-spring afternoon a few days ago, the latest plan to save the music industry was being scrutinized at a dimly lit panel discussion inside the Austin Convention Center.
There, some of the industry’s brightest minds were gathered: veteran manager Peter Jenner, McGill University professor Sandy Pearlman, Big Champagne Website founder Eric Garland, entertainment lawyer Dina LaPolt, and consultants Bryan Calhoun and Jim Griffin.
On the table was Griffin’s nascent proposal to have broadband users pay for any music they download through a fee bundled into their monthly Internet access bill. It would allow consumers to download, upload and share music without restriction, and create a pool of money collected from Internet service providers to compensate music copyright holders.
As news of Griffin’s plan spread, it was instantly dissected. It was even inaccurately labeled “a culture tax” by at least one critic on Pho, a contentious Internet mailing list on digital technology that Griffin founded.
“Our industry now functions on a tip jar,” he said. “We have to be extremely persuasive to get people to pay (for recorded music) or make it roughly involuntary to pay” in the same way that “sports has made it roughly involuntary to pay with cable TV deals.”
The proposal follows one that surfaced two months ago from Canadian songwriters, which sought a $5 government tax on every wireless and Internet account in the country. Both proposals are earnest attempts at adapting to and profiting from customer behavior rather than trying to squash it. In the last decade, the music industry’s primary means of dealing with unauthorized Internet downloading has been to issue threats and lawsuits. A few weeks ago, U2 manager Paul McGuinness called on Internet service providers to disconnect users who trade copyrighted files and urged governments to get involved if they don’t.
But there were signs at South by Southwest that at least some music-industry insiders were getting tired of such tactics. Suing file-sharers, Griffin said, “is shameful.”
His plan would create a live-and-let-live world in which peer-to-peer file sharing would co-exist with iTunes and other legitimate MP3 music stores. With an estimated 750 million people expected to be hooked into wireless broadband networks in Western Europe and the United States alone in the next decade, the potential revenue from licensing fees on Internet service providers could be substantial.
Yet such a forward-thinking plan might already be too little too late for the industry, McGill’s Pearlman said. A portable database containing all the music ever recorded is imminent, he said. “Once this paradise of infinite storage is entered,” he said, “it will represent the end of all intellectual property rights."
GREGG KOT
Chicago Tribune (MCT)