The Rants of Issachar

I should have commented on this a few days ago, but the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) has added a proposal to the ongoing debate that I can only characterize as mind bogglingly stupid. That they think that it's a "good proposal" and has any chance of being implemented I also find nearly unbelievable. The only explanation I have for it is that they're living in an echo chamber of like minded people and just don't realize how ridiculous the idea sounds to everyone outside their group.


The proposal is pretty simple. The government would put a $5 per month tax on all high speed internet connections and give everyone the right to swap as many songs online as they like. The money would go into a fund that would be distributed to compensate artists/writers/whoever in the proportion that they're being downloaded.

Obvious problems with proposal:

• The SAC says they can very accurately determine what's being shared on the internet. They can't. End of story. File sharers use a lot of different systems and they don't report what they're sharing. In fact a lot of them go through a lot of effort to make it exceptionally difficult to figure out what's being shared. (Because of the shall we say "questionable" legality of the practice). So who will get all this money?
  
• They don't really mention that it's only recognized Canadian artists/writers/whoever that will get any money.
• Are non-Canadians just getting stiffed or is this just about recognized Canadian music and nothing changes for everything else? I keep saying "recognized" because according to our governments rules, Brian Adams isn't a Canadian artist for content purposes. (See CanCon regulations).
  
• Actually, if you think about it, it isn't even all Canadian artists that would be compensated. It would Canadian artists who are listed as such and whose songs are registered and recognized as being downloaded. A small scale artist whose song isn't recognized yet won't get jack.
  
• File sharing networks don't just swap music. They swap music, video, software, electronic books and pretty much any other piece of media you can think of. So why shouldn't other content providers get a cut?
  
• Not everyone downloads music or spends anything like $5 per month on music. But they'll all pay the same $5 per month under this scheme.

I also heard Eddie Schwartz the acting President of the SAC on the CBC the other day being questioned about the proposal.

A few things stood out:

1. He didn't mention the "recognized Canadians only" issue. That's just dishonest in my book.
   
2. When asked what this would do to online music stores, (a sector that's growing every year), he responded that it was a "good question" before essentially saying that online sales weren't significant enough to matter and therefore it was just too bad that this would destroy that market.
3. He said that the proposal would give us a situation where all content could be freely & legally downloaded. That's just false. He said "content" and that's not the same thing as music.

The only good thing about this proposal is that it's just too ridiculous to be implemented. At it's core the proposal is that the government force everyone to pay for an entertainment product whether they like it or not. Ridiculous...