
Warner Music Pitches Music Tax To Universities: You Pay, We Stop Suing - peter123
http://techdirt.com/articles/20081204/1534153023.shtml
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The universities should unite to defend themselves collectively. Combined they
are surely more powerful than the music industry.

Or they could just get out of the business of supplying data connections. They
don't run their own electric power plants anymore. Why do they have to supply
Internet connectivity? They should just let students get it on the open
market.

~~~
coryrc
> They don't run their own electric power plants anymore

They don't? <http://www.harrisgroup.com/node/262>

This extortion thing has happened many times, but did they band together
before? There was some false patent about live video streaming and my
university (Michigan Tech) had the choice to fight it (and probably win) at 4x
cost or pay license fees of x (sorry I don't remember the figures). Well, MTU
paid the fees and the company probably moved onto the next school. I wonder
why higher education is so expensive...

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kylec
I'm not a lawyer, but how is this NOT extortion?

~~~
icky
[In "Fat Tony" voice]: That is a lovely University you've got there. It would
be a shame, if something were to... _happen..._

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paul9290
Warner is now signing acts to 360 deals. They finally are re-inventing their
business by making money off of the brands they create via touring,
merchandise, public appearances...everything but selling music.

This is what they should stick to and the rest of the industry should and I
suspect will follow.

~~~
seertaak
Great. Which pretty much guarantees that what little musicianship is left in
today's music will be flushed down the toilet and what we'll get instead is
some Hello! news story about how Rock Start X got spotted wearing Gucci at
Nobu in London.

Remind me again what was so bad about paying for the music that you listen to?
It seems to me the most economically efficient way of doing things: you pay
for the good you consume. What you're suggesting is that record companies
monetize music indirectly, and if you monetize, for example, by selling
clothing apparel, are you going to want to have Beyonce on your artist roster
or Ray LaMontagne?

Be careful what you wish for.

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peter123
there was a report a few days ago that basically said that university
education will be unaffordable for most people in a few years. This will only
make it worse.

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sarvesh
This is absurd even more so on the universities part that for even considering
it. Why would someone who doesn't want to own or download any music or even
for that matter someone who actully pays for his music be subjected to this
involuntary tax? Looks like the tution fees are not going to fall anytime
soon.

~~~
seertaak
The problem is that if the record companies actually go after the worst
perpetrators they get pilloried by the press for being nasty, when all they're
actually doing is protecting their property and means to livelihood. I can
just picture the reddit/hacker news stories: "I was sued for sharing music, my
mother has no job and has five children and lives off welfare, and I was
tasered by the cops to boot..."

The record companies are in a very difficult position; the market for sold
music has shrunk by _half_ in seven years - this during a period when actual
consumption of music undoubtedly increased. This kind of event would be
cataclysmic for _any_ business. The charge that they have mismanaged things
certainly has some truth, but they would be bleeding even if their industry
was led by Jack Welch. I suspect that more than a bit of this hand-wringing
over the failures of record companies' management is self-serving: by saying
that the record companies "were slow to adapt", it provides a justification
for me saying: "fuck it, I'll just steal the music". But 1) the days of music
not being available on a paying basis are now largely over. If you want to pay
for music, you no longer need to walk into a store to do so. So I'm afraid
that's no longer a valid excuse. Also, 2) two wrongs don't make a right: the
screw-ups of the record industry are not compensated for or negated by us
stealing their content. So there really is no excuse for downloading music
illegally nowadays. I would personally prefer if they engaged in some PR to
explain the plight of all the sound engineers, A&R guys, mixing engineers,
musicians -- in short, the entire ecosystem of jobs that form the music
industry -- how these guys are getting mercilessly whacked. That and then go
after the guys who share music, whether on college campuses or elsewhere; but
that would require that internet providers are on board. I can just hear the
howls over the infringement of privacy.

But make no mistake about this fact: if people don't _directly_ pay for the
music they consume, the quality of music will decrease.

~~~
burrokeet
This is one of the best responses I've seen to this debate here or otherwise.
As someone involved in that value chain, but who is not a musician or record
label, I can say with confidence that illegal downloading has devastated the
lives of many people I know- engineers, session musicians, composers, persons
who work at labels, publishers, distributors, etc. And the worst part of it is
that the small indie type artist and labels, that people claim to support
instead of the majors, are the ones who suffer the most. WEA, EMI, etc. can
scale down and adapt, but look at Pinnacle in the UK, who went under
yesterday, taking a huge amount of indie labels with them effectively.

