[pp.int.general] Some parting thoughts

[Andrew Norton]

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 11:25 AM, Stephane Bakhos
<nuitari at pirateparty.ca> wrote:

> Another point that would be nice to have is the reason why the PPSE platform
> is against some form of levy/tax for filesharing

That one is simple. I think Rick summed it up best when we did the EU
consultation on Levies a year or two back, with the question "Who gets
compensated for what, by whom, and on what basis".

Most levy systems are incredibly biased towards the major rights
holding companies, at the expense of the smaller artists. I might put
out a song, which gets popular online, and has 100,000 levy
compensable uses. There may also be a U2 track that has 10,000 such
uses (say, burning to a CD for those with a CD levy). As a small,
unknown artist, I get nothing, U2 gets lots. What is supposed to be
compensated for with the levy, never goes to those that it should,
because the usage of the levied material can't be measured.

In canada, CDs have a Levy (it was raised last december from 21c to
29c a CD) which supposedly goes to artists to offset copying. In the
past ten years, I've bought maybe 500 blank CDs. I think 8 have been
used for music. The $105 that would have generated under the levy (all
bought prior to december so 21c each) didn't go to the artists on the
CD, because no-one knows who they are (in fact, I don't know who 90%
of them are, all but one was using small unsigned bands for event
music. The levy money didn't go to them, and wouldn't in most cases,
because the levy is only paid out to Canadian musicians and labels
("While music authors and publishers may qualify regardless of their
nationality, at present only Canadian performers and record companies
qualify for payment." says http://cpcc.ca/english/pdf/NewsCPCCFAQ.pdf)
And when I last looked, last December, they had on-hand $54M - the
amount collected in levies in 06 and 07, that hadn't been paid out.

Hope that helps

Andrew

> ____________________________________________________
> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
>
>