According to a New York Times article, the Isle Of Man plans to establish a legalized peer-to-peer system, similar to the one proposed by the Songwriters Association of Canada. The Isle of Man system would involve a monthly license fee paid with broadband subscriptions and then allow for legal downloading of music from any source.
Update: More on the Isle of Man announcement here.
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Michael Geist
mgeist@uottawa.ca
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How Much?
I would be interested to know if the fee covers all private copying or just music. Will the fee also cover movies and software? It would be interesting if one levy covered everything in one fell swoop. Somehow I doubt it. A halfway solution won’t last long on the Isle of Mann or in Canada. A compulsive levy is only worthwhile if it’s comprehensive in scope and reasonable in price.
The devil will certainly be in the details on any such proposal. I look forward to learning how this will work out.
But… would licenses be voluntary….
….or is one assumes all GUILTY of sharing music and a country-wide net-tax imposed?
Canada is HORRIBLE at implementing good ideas and even worse for implementing and enforcing really, really bad ideas.
I do not share music via P2P, but I do share open-source code as a P/T developer. So, would I be forced to pay this unconstitutional (conviction without trial) tax if Canada goes this way? Most likely.
Right now we are all convicted of using CDR’s and DVDR’s of recording music. I DON’T RECORD MUSIC TO CD’S DAMMIT! I backup my computer and hold client files on them.
What I DO store music on, isn’t taxed – my HDD (which I get from the states anyway).
It would be a great idea, but Canada should not implement it out here – the government just isn’t mature enough to handle such an important task. They should let a mature administration, like an EU task force, handle such a thing.
Not really that helpful!
The Isle of Man has a population of a few thousand tax exiles. And I think it’s also totally subject to UK law on everythign else. So maybe not a very helpful example…