The Toronto Star reports on a Canadian Music Week panel that speculated on the prospect of paying for P2P.
Toronto Star on Paying for P2P
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Canada can do without copyright
“Raising awareness of the morality of free downloading doesn’t work, nor does litigation,”
Au contraire. If we could raise awareness in our legislators that free downloading was perfectly moral, then litigation wouldn’t occur nor even be possible.
But, how can you get legislators who have been brought up on 300 years of copyright legislation to even begin to suspect that monopolies on human culture might be unethical.
Free and unfettered cultural exchange is natural. It is the unnatural law of copyright that is being unravelled by far stronger laws of nature.
As for musicians’ motivation to make more music – if the masses want it, they’ll find a means and a mechanism, a market for music makers and music lovers to meet, to make a deal: music for money, money for music.
Just a free and fair market, without mercantile privilege or monopoly, without levy or taxation.
Canada can do without copyright, as can everyone.
Imagine, when communities realize, as San Francisco, California, and Ypsilanti, Michigan, have, that at $50 a house, they create a 21st century indigenous resource called, community broadband infrastructure. Now, granted they won’t have access to the worldwide Internet. Instead, they will have local phone, tv and radio. Everything P2P, and future generations will enjoy broadband speeds for most of their telecommunications for free.
When every community between San Francisco and Ypsilanti, Michigan do the same thing, the world becomes a different place.
Those who want to charge for P2P are banking on a broadband infrastructure that is controlled by corporate thugs. Maybe they’re banking in the wrong casino.
Where do they get their numbers from?
“85% of available bandwidth is used for piracy”???? And another 40% to 50% for spam (other claims seen elsewhere)? given these numbers, its amazing that I can post this at all 😉
Refund?
It is funny because I already thought that we were already paying for internet connection. Internet is a P2P network since at the end the communication is always established between two computers (being it a server or a peer computer). Furthermore bandwith is there in order to be used, does it? Perhaps only 1/3 (the supposed pirates) are using the service for what they pay for and the other 2/3 are not. For example I’m paying for 100GB worth of downloading but at the end of the month my quote probably is one tenth of that. Should I ask for a refund?
Blatant Propaganda
I don’t know if the Star’s entertainment columnist was conned or just accepted without question the ridiculous “Poor us” propaganda put forward by this bunch.
“Six second movie downloads”! “85% bandwidth used for piracy”! – just a little over the top I’d say, where are these guys getting their numbers from – each other!
What I find truly amazing is the notion that if we all pay more to someone, then al these problems go away. Now who would benefit from an idea like that?
I think the real focus of this bunch of front-men is demonstrated by the line, –
“”In the meantime, they’re looking at an empty screen waiting for searches and downloads – that’s a huge and untapped opportunity for advertisers. ”
In other words, if we can make a lot more money – then it’s all OK!!!
ENO, I suspect that that’s where the ISP’s are going, with much higher charges for high-volume users and maybe, just maybe, lower charges for the rest
I read and then reread Crosbie’s post, and am unable to figure how how you can have a free and fair market for music (or anything else) if the commodity can be taken for free.