[pp.int.general] cultural flatrate: PP position?

[pp at christian-hufgard.de]

On Mon, Jun 08, 2009 at 08:13:05AM +0200, Reinier Bakels wrote:
> I was very suprised by this message, and actually disdappoited, but now I 
> understand that you are a different Christian than the Christian that has 
> been elected in the EP. 

Ah, that explains a lot. :)


> Now I also understand your opinion on flatrates - 
> which seems hardly a PP position, but a capitulation to the pressure of 
> record companies, and an encouragement for rights owners to pursue other 
> "rent seeking" strategies. Flatrates basically accept the (imho) totally 
> outdated copyright system and try to organise the administration. 
> Apparently, flatrates simplify the collection - but there is virtually no 
> way to establish a just tariff. Redistributing the collected money is a 
> nightmare. It is utterly expensive (high "transaction cost"). In NL, the 
> redistribution of levy (Leervergüung) money became a nightmare and is now 
> under close parliament scrutiny. At some point in time it was even decided 
> to give money back to the producers of blank CDs etc. - but they are not 
> very well organised, actually an association of manufacturers had broken up.
> reinier 

Mmmh. BUMA/STEMRA takes only 3% of their money (unless they waste further 7% at the stock market...) In germany the share of the GEMA lies at 13%. Each year...
So I think you are having a pretty well organized structure.


Flatrates are in my point of view, a good tradeoff between the abolishing of private copies and a total removing of copyrights. And we need copyrights! Otherwise free licences are loosing their base. It's the creator who decides, what GPL or CC means. If to take him this right, his work might be taken by someone else, enhance it and make it "unfree". For music this will be no big problem. CC artists them can try to sue Sony/BMG if their work is reused withoud permission. What what about free software like linux?


Christian