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Thursday, May 29, 2008 The Consumerist’s “Worst Company in America 2007”; yep, you guessed it – the infamous Recording Industry Association of America – wants to charge us all a PIRACY TAX!?! We hear through the grapevine that content company lobbyists, including the RIAA, are still talking to Capitol Hill about slapping a tax on our monthly Internet bills to compensate the record labels for “piracy.”Wait, it gets better. If you haven’t heard about it, the plan is to make us ALL pay $5/month, whether you download a million songs, four songs, or none at all. And they don’t care whether you do it legally or illegally, peer-to-peer, or just use the Internet to send email to your grandmother. You’ve got an Internet connection; well, then you pay the tax. No soup for you. Any reasonable person would think that this latest stunt wouldn’t pass the most basic of straight face tests, but if you’ve been paying any attention to our friends up north, the Canadian record industry has actually succeeded in some of this, putting a tax on blank, writable CDs. Even if consumers buy the CDs just to back up their documents, the record industry gets the fee. And here’s another dirty little secret from right here in the States -Microsoft Zune users already pay a hidden fee to Universal Music when they buy Zune because Universal assumes that people buy it for piracy. If the overall climate for hi-jinks like this were more reality-based, we could get a really good laugh out of this stuff, but it’s not. Right now, reality bites. The RIAA continues to sue their own customers, is trying to get Congress to pass laws that withhold financial aid for students whose universities don’t monitor what they’re doing online, and they want to enlist the ISPs as copyright police forces. Dan Glickman, head of the all powerful Motion Picture Association of America, has also jumped in the pool, coming out swinging against the Open Internet, claiming that it “impede(s) our ability to respond to consumers in innovative ways”. We can’t even respond to that in a way becoming of the somewhat professional tone of this blog. All we can say to this, we suppose, is hang on. This ride’s GOING TO GET a lot wackier before it gets better. What do you think? Let us know... posted by Digital Freedom Campaign # 8:43 AM 
Comments:
This implies that everyone who uses the internet is a theif. If I take that point of view, why would I ever buy another piece of music? This is such an absurd approach that it boggles the mind.# posted by  Kylie : June 12, 2008 11:23 AM
This is, of course, patently ridiculous. Perhaps the music industry thinks it can save itself from its own largely self inflicted problems by getting $60 out of every ISP account per year. OK, I'll sign up, as long as music is then made completely free. Otherwise, this is such an absurd assault on personal freedom I can't understand why any politician in Congress would be willing to support such a bill.# posted by Benjamin : June 12, 2008 11:51 AM
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