A fast comment on piracy

Lately several people have mentioned that the failing music industry/artists should get slice of the monthly fee of Internet subscription, in a similar way that the industry gets money from empty VHS- and C-tapes and CD- and DVD-ROMs.
I had some troubles with this - particularly with the last one - I know I downloaded lots of questionable material on CD's back on the day, but today most CD-R's and DVD-R's of mine are full of photos, game-saves and other things I wouldn't hesitate to show to police. Mostly because the actual questionable material can safely be stored on hard drives and deleted after use. And then downloaded again, if need be.

Yeah, I'm not really making much of a case against, now aren't I? Well, this is the punchline;

When people talk of Internet, piracy and monthly compensation, how do we divide the money between the right parties? I mean, the number one legal way of using Internet is to browse web pages - why don't they get a share? What about porn? I have a feeling that porn is at least as big part of the traffic as Hollywood-movies or music from the big cartels.

Instead of trying to keep their stuff illegal, they could try to develop ways to get money out of Internet legally - for the U2 manager even iTunes was piracy against artist*. Radio seems to have worked well for the industry for decades. Over the past ten years, the music industry has done everything it could to shoot net radios down with fees that far outweight their income.

I'm not saying I'm opposed to subscrition system (I would be happy to get the whole copyright question sorted out, so we could concentrate on some real questions) - I just think that paying one group of people who claim their property is shared illegally isn't very good while people who provide their stuff for free on Internet get nothing - nor does game, film, porn or software industry. In the worst case scenario, each of them will be knocking at the door for their own $5. And in the best case scenario -- well, that's just fucking lazy, innit? If I were to forget a keg of beer at busy junction and then notice it empty afterward, I can't really ask the police to take $5 from every person in the neighbourhood who has alcohol on his breath. Or everyone else (he might have just hidden it for later consumption!).

Advertisements work as a model for webpages, for flash, blogs, even amateurish doodles - the Swedish procecutor is claiming that the owners of Piracy Bay are raking millions (YouTube certainly does) and Last.fm is doing fairly well as far as I know.

And the music industry is saying that they, armed with the best artists in the world can't do as well as a 14 year old kid with a pen and a scanner?

And if not advertisements, then maybe subscription -capitalistically chosen between competing alternatives, mind you... or just a dollar per song. I understand it's working very well. 2007 was -again- a record year for digital music transactions.

*and I bet he doesn't mean the fact that the artist gets 5 cents of the dollar, because the rest goes to printing and spreading the CDs. And of course manager will take his 20% out of that 5 cents as well. Plus taxes.

References; U2 manager blames Microsoft et al, Canadian songwriters propose legal music sharing, Music-industry tries carrot after years of stick, Internet radio may face crippling fees, Digital sales up worldwide.