[A2k] Ars Technica: Barenaked Ladies: If I had a compulsory blanket music license

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070427-barenaked-ladies-if-i-
had-a-compulsory-blanket-music-license.html

Barenaked Ladies: If I had a compulsory blanket music license

By Nate Anderson | Published: April 27, 2007 - 01:17AM CT

Plenty of ink has been spilled in arguments over the proper business
model for music in the P2P age. The publishers generally want to hold
onto the current market-based system, but there are voices in the
wilderness arguing that a compulsory license model actually makes the
most sense for both artists and consumers. One of those voices is
Steven Page, singer and guitarist for the Barenaked Ladies, who
recently spoke to Ars about this issue and called for an ISP-based
licensing model that would allow consumers access to all the music they
want and would ensure that artists get paid. But the US Register of
Copyrights, Marybeth Peters, calls this a bad idea.

Here's the idea: compulsory licenses allow anyone to take advantage of
whatever works are covered by the license without obtaining the
permissions that would otherwise be required. It is essentially an
exception made to copyright law that takes away a person's right to
control how copies of their material are handled. This doesn't mean a
compulsory license is free, though, only that the rate is determined by
statute.

The best known of these in the US is the mechanical license.
Songwriters and their publishers receive this rate=97currently set at
$.091 per song=97for every copy of an album sold that features their
song. Music labels are free to negotiate a lower rate, and many do (75
percent of the mechanical rate is common), but they can simply choose
to pay the mechanical royalty rate without negotiations.

Steven Page wants to see the model extended to music consumers, who
would pay a flat fee in order to legally access any digital music they
can get their hands on=97and no one would need to obtain a license from a
record label to distribute that music. Dressed in gray suit and
sneakers, Page is an articulate spokesman for his position, which is
premised on the idea that "music pirates" are actually "fans" and
shouldn't be punished for wanting to hear music. They should pay for
the privilege, but that payment should be low and kept as simple as
possible. And they should be allowed to redistribute and mash up
material.

"Not everyone's an artist," Page says, "but people can now express
themselves like artists do, by sharing something that means something
to them. If we had a system of compulsory licenses, they don't have to
worry about going and getting a license to do it, or circumventing the
system."

Canada does something a bit like this in that it places levies on blank
media; that money is then distributed to artists. But the system "works
better in principle than it does in practice," Page says. Blank media
prices stay high, and only Canadian artists are a part of the system,
which means that "I'm getting paid, but 50 Cent's not."
The ISP solution

The other problem is the formula used to distribute the cash. It's
based on radio play and record sales, but Page points out that "what's
being downloaded from the Internet and burned to CDs is usually not
that stuff." Instead, he proposes the ISP model, where ISPs simply
build an amount=97$5 or $10 a month, for instance=97into their fees, all of
which is distributed to artists based on tracking data from P2P
networks, etc.

ISPs are the natural place to collect such a fee, he thinks, because
they provide the gateway for people to access digital media. "People
don't like paying for music," Page admits, but says that "it's not
because they think it's free, they just don't like the process." This
would make that process simpler and remove the shackles of DRM that
prevent interoperability. ISPs who choose to filter P2P traffic could
offer access to those who don't want digitial music, but Page thinks
most people would find a blanket license a great deal.

But will it happen? The nation's top copyright official, Marybeth
Peters, said at a recent LexisNexis/Variety DRM conference that it's
not something she wants to see. "I hope we don't go to a system of
compulsory licenses," she said. "I don't see how any creator benefits
from a compulsory license." None of the other industry executives
expressed much love for the plan, either, arguing that the market would
work out all of its current interoperability problems on its own, and
that a compulsory license would stifle innovation.

But Page is adamant. "We need to get our music where our fans want it,"
he says, "not the other way around."

---------------------------------
Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
voice +41.22.791.6727
fax +41.22.723.2988
mobile +41 76 508 0997
thiru@keionline.org