Royalty fees included in fees would mean students could legally share music, but would also penalize those who don’t share music or live in on-campus housing.
Warner Music Group’s digital music strategist, Jim Griffin, is proposing a “‘voluntary blanket licensing’ for online access to music” scheme whereby students are taxed for the privilege of legalized file-sharing with the proceeds collected by a nonprofit, Choruss, and divvied up among copyright holders.
The presentation is making the rounds of college campuses nationwide by nonprofit technology advocate Educause, with Columbia, Stanford, University of Chicago, University of Washington, MIT, University of Colorado, University of Michigan, Cornell, Penn State, University of California at Berkeley and University of Virginia all reportedly having expressed some interest. It’s not surprising considering the recent passage of the Higher Education Act (HEA), which included provisions forcing colleges and universities to combat illegal file-sharing on campus, may eventually cost these institutions some $500,000 USD annually.
What’s particularly unsettling about the proposal is that it forces all students, whether they live off campus or not, or even whether they share music or not, to pay an extra fee with their college tuition. For as the plan notes, it’s either “All students or none.” How is this fair?
It also says that “Content owners refrain from all DMCA notices and lawsuits,” but that it is “Not really licensing” and that it merely will have a self-regulated “Covenant not to sue.”
The real problem is, however, that all labels, both indie and major, would have to sign up in order for the ‘download-what-you-want’ scheme to be fair. Even then, many copyright owners may see the plan as a dangerous ‘green light’ to piracy, opening the floodgates to naïve excuses of “I thought I could download films too” and so on.
With the record industry facing increasing confrontation by universities weary of its strong-arm tactics, it may just be that it’s scrambling to come up with a solution and fast.
The only other question I have, which a reader here was quick to point out, is what happens when all of the other copyright holder groups want in on the action? It’ll soon be say $10p/mo for the music industry, and then another $10 a piece for the movie, TV, software, and others. Where will it end and is it really plausible amidst already rapidly escalating tuition increases and a deteriorating economy?
jared@zeropaid.com
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You want an easy answer to the college student “problem” of file-sharing copyrighted material? Increase fees by $15 a month for a subscription to Napster and $20 a month for a subsc ription to NetFlix. That would be more than enough to satisfy everyone no? And if a studio refuses to release a movie then it shows that they have no interest in making money off of it and thus p2p file-sharing would not be a crime.
Yes the “answer” is that easy.
But what about the porn industry the video game industry the book publishers software publishers? Sure the Movie and Music industries are the most vocal now but give in to them and the others will also want to be compensated.
How much more arrogant can an industry be?
@MR
Exactly!
Same answer. Time for those industries to adopt the Napster/NetFlix model and be done with it. Use the distribution strength of the Internet not fight it. I would hate to go the British way where they assess a license fee on every TV you own. Screw that.