The Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) is now asking the Supreme Court of Canada to ask ISP’s to pay a royalty to them for the music downloads of their customers. Again, the question comes up of whether the ISP’s are responsible for the content that goes through their networks.
They are asking for 25 cents per year, plus 10 percent of any gross profits made through the sale of advertising. ISP’s around the world should be outraged that this is even being proposed.
To even suggest that the onus of paying royalties for music should fall on ISP’s is ludicrous. Next they’ll be going after the electrical companies because their service powers the computers that pirate music. By extention, since the ISP’s are now responsible for my actions on their network, if I hack into the Pentagon’s network through my ISP, I guess the FBI will be chasing after Rogers to throw them in jail.
Come on, guys! Think!
I might be wrong but isn’t there a precedent in China for this? Isn’t it structured that content providers are paid through ISPs? In otherwords… if you visit a particular site then a particular percentage of what you pay the ISP goes to that site?
Why is it such a bad thing ISPs pay a share? Aren’t we at last acknowledging that ISPs –who profit from advertising that they have fast networks for those who want to download movies and music and games illegally– can at last be expected to pay to those who have lost revenues??
– Jeff
The world’s gonna end, but I agree with Jeff. Radio stations are expected to pay when music is played, why not ISP’s? The 10% thing may be silly, but a 25 cent per user per month tarrif doesn’t seem that silly to me. I listen to ‘net radio all the time.
It’s odd that all of these things are coming up at a time when the recording industry seems to be embracing online distribution though.