Across Irish Sea: two bold tactics against music piracy, Gerd comments: Compensation not Control! (CS Monitor)

Image by gleonhard via Flickr

A god read: Across Irish Sea: two bold tactics against music piracy | csmonitor.com.
This is a good review of the Isle of Man plans to make music sharing on the Internet legal. I was asked to comment on this; here are some excerpts: 

“The logic is quite straightforward: You find a way of creating a payment within the network,” says Gerd Leonhard, a media futurist and author...Although a similar idea failed in France in 2006 amid a fierce lobbying effort by the recording industry, Mr. Leonhard has long argued that if the recording industry licensed Internet networks with a flatrate for streaming and downloading music, then advertising and other subsidies would be able to cover the entire CD business. He doesn’t even think the Isle of Man’s tax is necessary.

“The payment of about €1 [$1.28] per week, which we have been debating in Europe as a flat rate, is entirely possible to raise through the ecosystem. The music won’t be free, but it will feel like free,” he says, in an interview from Austria. Business models like Leonhard’s are becoming more feasible as concert tours, merchandise, and endorsements become more lucrative than recordings. “When Prince gives away his CD away with a British Sunday newspaper, he knows that he will be guaranteed three sold-out shows. That is worth more to him than the recording,” Leonhard says...."

Author and futurist Leonhard says the recording industry is fighting an uphill battle: “The tactic of criminalizing users hasn’t produced any money. The industry needs to look for compensation, not control.”

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