RIANZ comments on Kim Dotcom and my solution

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#748388 21-Jan-2013 19:22

Ragnor:
gzt:
DaveDog: Lets skip the semantics for a minute and look at the big picture

Based on your assumptions and presentation anyone will agree with your argument about the morality of copyright infringement. It is still copyright infringement and not theft. Thinking otherwise leads to fuzzy thinking and really annoying advertisements.

Exactly no matter how much of a strawman you decide to setup set up it's copyright infringement not theft, by legal definition.

But I was specifically talking about morals here...

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#748392 21-Jan-2013 19:24

And that is perfectly ok. Just don't get confused about the nature of copyright.

jonherries

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#748739 22-Jan-2013 12:53

I think Ray has raised an interesting discussion about business models.

My thought is that the idea has some merit, but has some loopholes which people have complained about including paying twice, the number of people behind a "connection", the dfference between residential and commerical licenses.

I believe the model should be made a blanket tax for all ISPs, which would be a condition of signup with no opt-out. To address the major concern about "paying twice". Once you are being taxed, it is your choice to DL from whichever source you prefer. This may still be itunes and you may choose to pay twice or you could go somewhere else. It would present a consolidated model of billing for all involved, and be quite efficient from an economic perspective.

The key issue is price, as someone mentioned in a previous post the marginal cost on recorded music is now close to nil, so in theory the value of the service should reflect this, would people be happier with a $3 per month tax on their ISP bill? ~ 1.5million residential subscribers (stats.govt.nz) *12months = ~$54million in revenue. I wonder what the music industry is currently worth in NZ (excluding physical sales of course).

Separately:

I do have a technical question about tracking downloads which is: do the trackers confirm you have DLed all of the torrent? If you haven't the file is a useless set of 0's and 1's. It isn't like you get the first 95% of the song or whatever? This leads onto another question which is one about copyright in general, how different is derivative? How many 1's and 0's need to change for it not to be the same?

Jon

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#748769 22-Jan-2013 13:32

Many times more exchange than NZ$54m that is for sure. The question about artistic similarity is dealt with at the 'art' level not binary comparison. Questions like what proportion of a lyric is the same etc, has the picture been recoloured and claimed as original etc. Those are the issues which come up in copyright cases about similarity and derived works.

Edit: The $3 per month per internet user = revenue of $54m is sufficient to show the internet service tax model is a non-starter. Ray is suggesting an individual subscription model - that is a very different approach. Maybe try some calculations on that one.

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#748800 22-Jan-2013 14:01

Physical and digital earnings were $65 million in 2010, so if we add a commerical rate on top of the money I suggested above, we get pretty close.

Source: http://rianz.org.nz/rianz/rianz_about_marketstats.asp

Jon

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#748806 22-Jan-2013 14:10

I would be a bit surprised if that was correct. I would like to know exactly what that figure includes. There is no detail at all about how that figure is arrived at or what it represents. The headline "Industry revenue" does not say anything about the who and what.

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#748819 22-Jan-2013 14:17

gzt: I would be a bit surprised if that was correct. I would like to know exactly what that figure includes. There is no detail at all about how that figure is arrived at.

I would suggest there is a difference between what the number includes and whether it is "correct" (it could be both either or neither).

I copied it from the website correctly (and rounded), presumably they check what they put on their website?
The percentage change looks about right (I just checked that). I am not sure what incentive they would have to make it smaller? I wonder if it excludes subscription services like Pandora/Spotify etc. They would have an incentive to inflate the figure to make the industry appear more important?

I am pretty sure it wouldn't be in their interest to break down those figures into details.

Jon

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#748822 22-Jan-2013 14:19

jonherries: I believe the model should be made a blanket tax for all ISPs, which would be a condition of signup with no opt-out. To address the major concern about "paying twice". Once you are being taxed, it is your choice to DL from whichever source you prefer. This may still be itunes and you may choose to pay twice or you could go somewhere else. It would present a consolidated model of billing for all involved, and be quite efficient from an economic perspective.

It's not a tax, because it's not going to a state fund to be used for the benefit of all citizens. It's a fee and it goes to private pockets.

I do not want to pay a fee for something I do not use.

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#748823 22-Jan-2013 14:22

jonherries: I think Ray has raised an interesting discussion about business models.

The key issue is price, as someone mentioned in a previous post the marginal cost on recorded music is now close to nil, so in theory the value of the service should reflect this, would people be happier with a $3 per month tax on their ISP bill? ~ 1.5million residential subscribers (stats.govt.nz) *12months = ~$54million in revenue. I wonder what the music industry is currently worth in NZ (excluding physical sales of course).

Separately:

I do have a technical question about tracking downloads which is: do the trackers confirm you have DLed all of the torrent?

Jon

Just to be clear - I am against it as a form of tax. I prefer an optional add-on sold via the ISP. This is to avoid the paying twice problem. The idea is that if you want to download from somewhere like itunes, then yes you can pay them. But if you want to torrent or download from unauthorised sources, then the subscription makes them become authorised. If you download from itunes, but then decide to download from the pirate bay without the subscription and get caught, then you get sued.

Re your technical question.
A company (often a specialised department in the basement of a lawfirm) will usually be hired by the recording recording company to find copyright offenders in a specific country. They will then set up bait seeds which will join a popular swarm. Eg. Men in Black III on the pirate bay.

The bait pc inside the lawyers office will upload some of the movie to you, and then download a piece of the movie from you. Once they have done that, your participation is confirmed - you have been downloading and distributing copyrighted material and the detection company or law firm have been given authorisation by the rights holder to act on their behalf and take legal action. In NZ this means following the 3-strikes process.

On your computer, you will be running a torrent program like utorrent.
Here is a screenshot from google images which shows all the peers connected to the computer who are downloading and uploading data. They take your ip address and do a whois query to find your ISP.
http://blog.consultmirror.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/utorrent-peer-list.gif

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jonherries

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#748825 22-Jan-2013 14:31

raytaylor:
jonherries: I think Ray has raised an interesting discussion about business models.

The key issue is price, as someone mentioned in a previous post the marginal cost on recorded music is now close to nil, so in theory the value of the service should reflect this, would people be happier with a $3 per month tax on their ISP bill? ~ 1.5million residential subscribers (stats.govt.nz) *12months = ~$54million in revenue. I wonder what the music industry is currently worth in NZ (excluding physical sales of course).

Separately:

I do have a technical question about tracking downloads which is: do the trackers confirm you have DLed all of the torrent?

Jon

Just to be clear - I am against it as a form of tax. I prefer an optional add-on sold via the ISP. This is to avoid the paying twice problem. The idea is that if you want to download from somewhere like itunes, then yes you can pay them. But if you want to torrent or download from unauthorised sources, then the subscription makes them become authorised. If you download from itunes, but then decide to download from the pirate bay without the subscription and get caught, then you get sued.

Re your technical question.
A company (often a specialised department in the basement of a lawfirm) will usually be hired by the recording recording company to find copyright offenders in a specific country. They will then set up bait seeds which will join a popular swarm. Eg. Men in Black III on the pirate bay.

The bait pc inside the lawyers office will upload some of the movie to you, and then download a piece of the movie from you. Once they have done that, your participation is confirmed - you have been downloading and distributing copyrighted material and the detection company or law firm have been given authorisation by the rights holder to act on their behalf and take legal action. In NZ this means following the 3-strikes process.

Thanks for the technical pointer.

If it isn't a "tax", but a "fee" as Freitasm points out (it could be a tax ala TV broadcasting license in Britain and the money could be distributed by a government agency say NZOnAir - but thats another discussion).

How do we make sure that people don't say "oh I only download from itunes" then go and torrent it up (using torrent as a verb for illegal DLing, apologies in advance). You need an incentive such as immunity from prosecution under the three-strikes? Maybe this is what you were getting at before. That would be interesting as surely RIANZ wouldn't have a right to "not prosecute you", ie. surely the police could still choose to? Or because this is a civil matter, it becomes a don't ask don't tell type arrangement? Could you trust a company to not change their mind in the future? Eg. Pay this fee and we agree not to prosecute you, but we reserve the right to do so in the future.

Jon

DaveDog

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#748827 22-Jan-2013 14:34

I believe the model should be made a blanket tax for all ISPs, which would be a condition of signup with no opt-out. To address the major concern about "paying twice". Once you are being taxed, it is your choice to DL from whichever source you prefer. This may still be itunes and you may choose to pay twice or you could go somewhere else. It would present a consolidated model of billing for all involved, and be quite efficient from an economic perspective.

I would be opposed to this in that I am paying a fee (not a tax) for a service that I don't want or use...

Rather - they need to target those that are (unlawfully or not) distributing music (or anything else) without paying their dues (note - that is their dues... not mine)...

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jonherries

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#748833 22-Jan-2013 14:38

DaveDog:
I believe the model should be made a blanket tax for all ISPs, which would be a condition of signup with no opt-out. To address the major concern about "paying twice". Once you are being taxed, it is your choice to DL from whichever source you prefer. This may still be itunes and you may choose to pay twice or you could go somewhere else. It would present a consolidated model of billing for all involved, and be quite efficient from an economic perspective.

I would be opposed to this in that I am paying a fee (not a tax) for a service that I don't want or use...

Rather - they need to target those that are (unlawfully or not) distributing music (or anything else) without paying their dues (note - that is their dues... not mine)...

The reason I went with blanket tax, is for efficiency purposes. I just think it would be hard and costly to manage otherwise which would add to the cost of the fee.

Just like the GST exemption for frutis and vegetables (google: pastie tax uk for another example).

Yes I accept it would drive people to choose alternatives to itunes, but there are alternatives now...

And we all know that bittorrent is a bandwidth efficient distribution mechanism ;)

Jon

gzt

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#748834 22-Jan-2013 14:39

jonherries:
gzt: I would be a bit surprised if that was correct. I would like to know exactly what that figure includes. There is no detail at all about how that figure is arrived at.

I would suggest there is a difference between what the number includes and whether it is "correct" (it could be both either or neither).

The question on the 'revenue' figure is not about rounding up or down.

Does that figure represent the total value of recorded music sales in NZ or something substantially different?

In any case, it is clearly not the total value of music purchased in NZ because the figure does not include iTunes and Amazon sales to users in NZ but that is a different question again and not related to the first directly.

jonherries

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#748835 22-Jan-2013 14:41

gzt: The question on the figure is not about rounding up or down.

Does that figure represent the total value of recorded music sales in NZ or something substantially different?

In any case, it is clearly not the total value of music purchased in NZ because the figure does not include iTunes and Amazon sales to users in NZ but that is a different question again and not related to the first directly.

According to RIANZ it is the value of "the market" whatever that means. I assume it is all the royalties they collect on behalf of local and international artists?

Jon

DaveDog

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#748837 22-Jan-2013 14:45

jonherries:
DaveDog:
I believe the model should be made a blanket tax for all ISPs, which would be a condition of signup with no opt-out. To address the major concern about "paying twice". Once you are being taxed, it is your choice to DL from whichever source you prefer. This may still be itunes and you may choose to pay twice or you could go somewhere else. It would present a consolidated model of billing for all involved, and be quite efficient from an economic perspective.

I would be opposed to this in that I am paying a fee (not a tax) for a service that I don't want or use...

Rather - they need to target those that are (unlawfully or not) distributing music (or anything else) without paying their dues (note - that is their dues... not mine)...

The reason I went with blanket tax, is for efficiency purposes. I just think it would be hard and costly to manage otherwise which would add to the cost of the fee.

Just like the GST exemption for frutis and vegetables (google: pastie tax uk for another example).

Yes I accept it would drive people to choose alternatives to itunes, but there are alternatives now...

And we all know that bittorrent is a bandwidth efficient distribution mechanism ;)

Jon

Well - That's nonsense... It would also be more efficient to target dangerous drivers by simply ticketing everyone to keep them honest - shouldn't happen that way...

If someone is breaking the rules - you target them, not the law abiding users...

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