RIAA and Public Media

[The Third Man]

Well first there was a radio tax and then it was a combined TV/radio one (or just radio if you didn't have a TV) and as more and more people had TVs it just became a silent part of the combo TV license however I still think that if you don't have a TV the original radio tax applies.

I think the radio licence has now been abolished. I went for many years without a TV; the experience with the licensing authority was wearying - they don't believe you at all, you get numerous letters and forms and declarations to sign and then eventually someone calls round your house. That's quite fun actually ("Are you sure you don't want to look in the shitter? I could have a TV in there you know". "That won't be necessary Sir"). The first inspector who called on me was quite a pleasant talkative sort, he told me they don't even bother looking for PC TV cards, and that radios do not require a licence. I believe that radios were exempted on the grounds that they're important in times of national emergency, and for traffic updates in cars.

Yes, the TV licence is cheaper for black/white only, and interestingly enough there is a reduction, but not a waiving, if you are blind.

[TheDarkling]

Yeah you are right Radio only licenses were abolished, and the blind reduction rate is 50%, heres a link for Shep to scoff at http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/keyfac ... efee.shtml of course it keeps from the BBC so its not to be trusted, prehaps they are altering history already before they change thier name to Ministry of Truth in a few years.

The onlu thing that bugs me is that non Uk people get the BBC for free, I wonder if the EU will interfere for us.

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

Shush now we wouldn't want reality to impinge on Sheps Anglophobia.

Uh huhm, my view towards your system has been biased since I once saw
an episode of Michael Moore's TV NATION showing how the british government
pays people to drive around in special vans to find "unregistered" TV
sets

Is that a "Law and Order"-esque show they have over there?

(Officer looks into window through binoculars.)

"Blimey! It's an unregistered telly!"

Now, enough with my uncalled-for attempt at "humor", I want to talk about the subject.

I think it's a bit like taking from many for the sake of a small convienence. I'm sure people won't be willing to pay hundreds more on electrical appliances for the sake of saving money on music. I'd say it's worse than having to pay $20 for a CD with one or two good songs, since the latter is paid for by the people who buy the music, so people who by no or a few CDs don't have to help pay for them.

[kojikun]

Hm.. well perhaps something could be worked out.. a lower tax, or a house tax or something.. But I think there needs to be SOME public media corporation like the BBC. You'd be hard pressed to say the BBC is a waste of money, or that it produces poor quality entertainment.

If you want to bitch about not using the music, fuck you. You already pay taxes for parks you don't use, so stop acting like I'm proposing some heinous concept where your precious money is stolen from you. Go bitch about those before you bitch about this. Atleast this has serious potential for society.

But anyway, yeah, maybe just a $100 tax per household or something. You may not use it, but the reason you'd be taxed is so that you CAN use it.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Come back to me when you are forced to pay taxes that you couldn't even vote for or against in the first place because you happen to live just outside city limits...

---Edit---
Double post fixed spanky

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Airtight except like Microsoft's blatant Illegalities it has administrative freedom from the powers that be. We can't get a federal judge with the balls to rip them like thery should be ripped...

Well, palms are being greased like there's no tomorrow. Frankly, I'm willing to wait and watch the RIAA fall...

Exactly, they're only postponing their downfall. The more they try to keep it from happening, the more horrifically destructive to them it will be when it does come...

[Edi]

Hm.. well perhaps something could be worked out.. a lower tax, or a house tax or something.. But I think there needs to be SOME public media corporation like the BBC. You'd be hard pressed to say the BBC is a waste of money, or that it produces poor quality entertainment.

This is true enough. Public media corporations often do produce good quality entertainment, like BBC and the Finnish Yleisradio.

If you want to bitch about not using the music, fuck you. You already pay taxes for parks you don't use, so stop acting like I'm proposing some heinous concept where your precious money is stolen from you. Go bitch about those before you bitch about this. Atleast this has serious potential for society.

False analogy. People pay a percentage of taxes to the state, which the state uses to fund various things. One of those is parks, but there is no specific park tax aimed at providing public parks, unlike your proposed music tax that would have one purpose only..

But anyway, yeah, maybe just a $100 tax per household or something. You may not use it, but the reason you'd be taxed is so that you CAN use it.

People with no TVs are not required to pay a TV license to support a public media corporation here, or in Britain. Only if I actually own a TV and watch it am I required to pay that license, it is not collectible by default just so that I would have the possibility of watching TV. I'm not going to pay €100 a year for something I don't use, and anybody who tries to collect will be told bluntly to fuck off.

Your blanket, no exceptions tax simply cannot fly legally, and it is impossible to implement a practical verification system for the taxation model based on use, so this idea, while still better than the original one, dies stillborn. It's still a worse cure than the disease it tries to get rid of. Besides, there is still the problem of cross-border jurisdiction, because the RIAA would insist on trying to apply this model everywhere, and it has fuck-all say in how the law is e.g. in Finland.

Just let it go, koji, because there is no way you can make this work.

Edi

[kojikun]

False analogy. People pay a percentage of taxes to the state, which the state uses to fund various things. One of those is parks, but there is no specific park tax aimed at providing public parks, unlike your proposed music tax that would have one purpose only..

Its a very GOOD analogy. You're still taxed for parks, the percent of what you PAY is different. The same could be done with the public media corporation. I just thinking fixed number, but that doesnt mean it can't be a % of taxes instead.

People with no TVs are not required to pay a TV license to support a public media corporation here, or in Britain. Only if I actually own a TV and watch it am I required to pay that license, it is not collectible by default just so that I would have the possibility of watching TV. I'm not going to pay €100 a year for something I don't use, and anybody who tries to collect will be told bluntly to fuck off.

You don't have to watch BBC to be taxed on it tho. What if you only watch Channel 4? you still get taxed for BBC, even tho you don't watch it. You have public radio in finland or whatever? Do you listen to Yleisradio? Lets say you don't, instead you listen to classic rock stations. But you still get taxed for Yleisradio. So why aren't you pissed about that?

Your blanket, no exceptions tax simply cannot fly legally, and it is impossible to implement a practical verification system for the taxation model based on use, so this idea, while still better than the original one, dies stillborn.

It's a tax on people who have the ability to use the service, not on people who don't. It's exactly like the british or finnish taxes.

It's still a worse cure than the disease it tries to get rid of. Besides, there is still the problem of cross-border jurisdiction, because the RIAA would insist on trying to apply this model everywhere, and it has fuck-all say in how the law is e.g. in Finland.

The RIAA wouldn't insist on applying this everywhere because it would (theoretically) no longer exist. Not that it will continue to exist for much long anyway.

Just let it go, koji, because there is no way you can make this work.

You admitted it works with BBC and Yleisradio, so wtf are you on about? the only thing I'm proposing is that the US EXPANDs its public media corporations to include a large portion of the music industry like the BBC does in britain, instead of the small portion it already has. You're making shit up then contradicting the arguements that I never made. I suggest it is you who lets it go.

[Edi]

People with no TVs are not required to pay a TV license to support a public media corporation here, or in Britain. Only if I actually own a TV and watch it am I required to pay that license, it is not collectible by default just so that I would have the possibility of watching TV. I'm not going to pay €100 a year for something I don't use, and anybody who tries to collect will be told bluntly to fuck off.

You don't have to watch BBC to be taxed on it tho. What if you only watch Channel 4? you still get taxed for BBC, even tho you don't watch it. You have public radio in finland or whatever? Do you listen to Yleisradio? Lets say you don't, instead you listen to classic rock stations. But you still get taxed for Yleisradio. So why aren't you pissed about that?

Radio is not taxable here. Only TV is. We've only got four universally viewable channels, Ch 1&2 are public channels operated by Yleisradio (that's the name of the corporation, which had its roots in radio broadcasting), MTV3 and Ch 4 are privately owned and get most of their revenue from commercials. If you watch TV at all, you're going to have to pick and choose from all four channels anyway to get the good programs. There's a few more channels available for those whose household belong to the basic cable network (such as BBC World, Eurosport and a few others), and everything else you have to pay extra for.
I could listen to any and all radio stations as much as I wanted and never pay a penny for it, but TV license costs roughly €170 a year.

Your blanket, no exceptions tax simply cannot fly legally, and it is impossible to implement a practical verification system for the taxation model based on use, so this idea, while still better than the original one, dies stillborn.

It's a tax on people who have the ability to use the service, not on people who don't. It's exactly like the british or finnish taxes.

Not quite, as this tax is very broadly defined and on a scale that is going to destroy several large industries just in order to sustain an outdated business model and an organization that has been convicted of lawbreaking on this issue already. It cannot work. If you wanted to institute something like a Yleisradio or BBC, that could work on the British or Finnish model, but a tax to make music free won't. The reason for this is that radio and TV are broadcast media with a point-to-multi-point distribution model and the tap can be truend off at the source. This is a basic requirement of a workable taxation scheme of the kind that we're talking about, and this requirement simply does not exist for music, because the Internet is a multi-point-to-multi-point environment where anybody can fucntion as a broadcaster.

It's still a worse cure than the disease it tries to get rid of. Besides, there is still the problem of cross-border jurisdiction, because the RIAA would insist on trying to apply this model everywhere, and it has fuck-all say in how the law is e.g. in Finland.

The RIAA wouldn't insist on applying this everywhere because it would (theoretically) no longer exist. Not that it will continue to exist for much long anyway.

The RIAA is a tad bit too politically powerful right now to be dismantled from the top down and to the ground, which would be another requirement for your system to work, and which is not going to happen. RIAA will eventually fail on its current business model, but any attempt at implementing your suggestion would only lead to a half-assed compromise that would serve to give RIAA a breather in the form of government welfare, as if it needs anymore than it already gouges out of everyone.

Just let it go, koji, because there is no way you can make this work.

You admitted it works with BBC and Yleisradio, so wtf are you on about? the only thing I'm proposing is that the US EXPANDs its public media corporations to include a large portion of the music industry like the BBC does in britain, instead of the small portion it already has. You're making shit up then contradicting the arguements that I never made. I suggest it is you who lets it go.

Look at the bigger picture and the technical feasibility of implementation, specifically the point to multi-point vs multi-point to multi-point aspect. It all sounds nice on paper and in theory, but when you get to actually thinking about implementation, reality ass-rapes the idea. It doesn't work because of the technical nature of the web. Something could perhaps have been worked out if RIAA had gotten to thinking about this ten years ago, but now it's too late.

Edi