Opinions

January 14, 2008
Laura Kelsey

drsexysex@yahoo.ca

 

 

Music Piracy:

What’s the Solution?
For-Pay MP3s Are Still the Best Bet

By Dennis Leong

Wore got portable music players
that can hold tens of thousands of songs.
Record companies see that as a threat,
and it’s easy to see why: 10,000 songs
is probably more music than the average
Canadian legally purchases in a lifetime.
This storage capacity is only going to
grow in the coming years and the music
industry is trying to regain its control
over its own products. While the old
business model required physical sales
of music media to recoup funds and
potentially profit, now there is a new
business model slowly, but surely, taking
over. It took Apple, a computer company,
to realize the potential market in selling
music cheaply and quickly online. The
record companies resisted the idea at
first but now they’ve got no choice.

Who would pay for the
convenience of downloading a song? I
know I would. I don’t download songs
because I can’t be sure I’m getting the
right thing. I once had a friend rave
about a Dream Theater album he had
downloaded months before the release
date only to find out after the release of
the album that he had been listening to

an older album by a completely different
band. And what of the quality of the
song I’m downloading? I can’t be sure
if somebody decided to rip only half
the song or convert it to mono. I would
gladly pay for a service that would

An “Downloading Tax”
Embraces the Inevitable

By Luke Simcoe

Ty. ring in the New Year,
the Songwriters Association of Canada
(SAC) has proposed a radical new
approach to online file-sharing.

Backed by 187 Canadian
performing acts, including Avril Lavigne
and the Barenaked Ladies, SAC has

put forth a plan that would effectively
legitimize Internet piracy by applying
a monthly levy of five dollars to every
wireless and Internet account in the
country.

SAC claims that such a
levy—similar to the existing surcharge
on blank recording media and digital

media players—
would generate
approximately $1
billion annually.
While SAC’s
proposal does
not detail exactly
» how this revenue
— would be allocated,
it says it would
be distributed to
artists, labels and
publishers.

D.e-s pite
being referred to
by one artist as “the
first progressive
proposal we’ ve seen
in Canada to address
file-sharing,” the
country’s recording
industry has been
quick to rail against
SAC’s plan.

guarantee I’d get a high quality (possibly
lossless) digital version of the exactly
song I want: Not the song covered by
another band, not a re-recording by a
later line-up of the same band, not a live
bootleg. Given guaranteed assurance of

Canadian Recording Industry
Association (CRIA) President Graham
Henderson denounced the proposal as a
“pipe dream,” and Alistair Mitchell, the
CEO of Puretracks, has said that SAC’s
plan is “flawed,” and that it “would
signal the death of paid music services
in Canada.”

From here on in, this piece is
going to be an editorial, because when
it comes to issues of copyright, I can
seldom contain my opinion. As much of
a “pipe dream” as SAC’s proposal is—it
would require progressive changes to
the Copyright Act and the cooperation of
the country’s Internet service providers,
most of whom have no desire to collect
and manage what is essentially a tax—it’s
hard not to see the industry’s response as
a reactionary attempt to hold on to what
little control they still have of the creative
commons while simultaneously trying to
justify their continued existence.

Basically, it’s as much, or
more, of a pipe dream to believe that
the industry’s protectionist stance will
eventually stop people from downloading
music. Industry groups like the CRIA
are essentially clinging to a sinking ship,
and they’re refusing anyone’s offer of a
flotation device unless it’s the exact kind
that they’re used to wearing.

the content and quality of the content,
users would flock to it even if it were a
pay-per-use service.

What would this cost the
record companies? The quick answer
is: Not much. Their vaults are already
overflowing with gems whose recording
sessions have long been paid for and
their costs recouped many times over.
They don’t need to digitize all of their
music. After all, they were the ones who
decided it was good enough to put three
radio singles on an album and pad the
rest of it with filler songs. They force-
fed us radio singles to sell the albums
and as a result that’s what people want
when they go search for that one Duran
Duran song they remember from their
high school prom.

The cost of recording those old
songs has been paid back in spades so
it’s only a small investment to properly
digitize an existing recording and
sell it online for a few cents. But this
doesn’t fly because record companies
make more money if they sell you the
whole CD. And this is what they don’t

Continued on Page 21

Despite this attitude, and their
ability to view facts through the same
lens used by Stephen Colbert (Canada’s
digital music sales grew 122 percent
between 2006 and 2007, far faster than
either the U.S. or Europe, but the CRIA
opted to refer to this unprecedented
growth as an “undeveloped digital market
that continues to lag significantly behind
these other markets”), organizations
like the CRIA continue to hold a lot
of influence over the country’s policy
makers.

And sadly that, more than any
other reason, is why proposals like that
brought forward by SAC remain pipe
dreams.

Anyway, I’ve said it before,
and I'll say it again: Copyright is going
to be one of the defining policy areas of
our generation, and the decisions that are
made today will have a profound affect
on the future. So get involved: Write a
letter to your local MP, join a Facebook
group, sign a petition, and educate
yourself so that you can educate others.

For more information about
copyright policy in Canada, check out
University of Ottawa professor Michael
Geist’s blog (www.michaelgeist.ca).