The troubles roiling Napster has got me thinking that it's only a matter of time before the government steps in to provide relief for all the copyright holders who are being ripped off on a daily basis on the Internet. They can do this by imposing a special tax on bandwidth.
It's not just music being pirated, but billions of dollars in software and movies as well. As broadband contines to filter down to the "last mile," the situation will only worsen. Everyone here is tech savvy and knows that fighting software piracy is about as futile as the war on drugs. The best any government can do is to make it more difficult.
But just as it's almost impossible to stop the stealing, it's equally difficult for people to avoid paying for their bandwidth and any taxes levied on it. To avoid a tax on bandwidth, one would have to be able to tap into communications lines, something way beyond the capabilities of the average person. In effect, government would be acting as the agent of aggrieved industry, turning the tables on copyright violators by forcing an inevitable charge upon them. This is already being done in one respect, with the taxes levied on blank media such as cassettes and music CD-Rs. The only way around those taxes is by shoplifting. It's harder to shoplift bandwidth.
The difficult part for the publishers of copyrighted works wouldn't be in collecting the money but in deciding how to divide it amongst themselves. In that regard it may be better to have "sharing" servers like Napster out in the open where accounting for the works being traded would be easier, instead of forcing people underground and requiring that governments and industries make highly innacurate estimates of the losses incurred, which I'm sure they would tilt way in their favor. This would make the accounting process more accurate and make dividing the spoils more equitable. That way The Corrs would be sure to get more money from the tax than Limp Bizkit. The publisher of Quake 3 would get a bigger share of the pie than the publisher of Daikatana, etc...
Nobody likes taxes, but this is why I think a bandwidth tax, or surcharge, is inevitable, even desirable. Not only would artists and copyright holders receive compensation, they would also enjoy the side benefit of bearing less of a financial burden for the physical distribution of their works.
It's not just music being pirated, but billions of dollars in software and movies as well. As broadband contines to filter down to the "last mile," the situation will only worsen. Everyone here is tech savvy and knows that fighting software piracy is about as futile as the war on drugs. The best any government can do is to make it more difficult.
But just as it's almost impossible to stop the stealing, it's equally difficult for people to avoid paying for their bandwidth and any taxes levied on it. To avoid a tax on bandwidth, one would have to be able to tap into communications lines, something way beyond the capabilities of the average person. In effect, government would be acting as the agent of aggrieved industry, turning the tables on copyright violators by forcing an inevitable charge upon them. This is already being done in one respect, with the taxes levied on blank media such as cassettes and music CD-Rs. The only way around those taxes is by shoplifting. It's harder to shoplift bandwidth.
The difficult part for the publishers of copyrighted works wouldn't be in collecting the money but in deciding how to divide it amongst themselves. In that regard it may be better to have "sharing" servers like Napster out in the open where accounting for the works being traded would be easier, instead of forcing people underground and requiring that governments and industries make highly innacurate estimates of the losses incurred, which I'm sure they would tilt way in their favor. This would make the accounting process more accurate and make dividing the spoils more equitable. That way The Corrs would be sure to get more money from the tax than Limp Bizkit. The publisher of Quake 3 would get a bigger share of the pie than the publisher of Daikatana, etc...
Nobody likes taxes, but this is why I think a bandwidth tax, or surcharge, is inevitable, even desirable. Not only would artists and copyright holders receive compensation, they would also enjoy the side benefit of bearing less of a financial burden for the physical distribution of their works.
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