Songwriters Association of Canada is Way Off Base

This morning I was listening to CJOB and heard an interview with someone from the Songwriters Association of Canada. I would love to post a link to the interview on the CJOB site, as well as the name of the songwriter that was interviewed, however they require Windows Media Player to listen to or even search their audio vault, and bening on a Mac I cannot access this content, but that is another post for another day.

Anyway, I was slightly surprised by some of the things being said by this gentleman, and thought it was worth a listen. He made some good points and I was suprised that the Songwriters were actually admitting that something different had to be done. Their proposal however is flawed on many levels.

1. getting ISPs to agree to collect and manage this "tax" is highly unlikely.

2. getting people in general to agree to this would be incredibly difficult. People seem to be bothered when any service goes up in price.

3. ummm record labels agreeing to this? Not likely.

4. so if I pay $5 per month for P2P access to music, does that mean I will also have to pay $5 for movies, $5 for TV shows, $5 for audiobooks, $5 for newspapers, $5 for software, $5 for google, and $5 to manage all these programs? Where will it all end?

5. I don't actually download much music, and the stuff I do is 99% of the time purchased on iTunes because it is just so darn easy. Yes I know there is DRM on these files, and no I don't like it but I really don't have too many other options.

6. Getting government to agree to make it legal to share and download these files in Canada. Yes we are going through copyright reform discussions right now, but this is a one-sided conversation at this point ;-)

7. do I have to pay this on my home cable account, my cell phone account, my wife's cell phone account, my daughter's cell phone account, when I wirelessly roam via wifi at a hotspot, and when I am using my wimax account if it ever is available in my province?

8. they think that technology exists to determine what songs I am downloading, however I have to encrypt my bit torrent connections because my ISP throttles the traffic, therefore they would have no clue what I am downloading or uploading.

9. the Songwriters state they are not against Technical Protection Measures, but they would be obsolete as people wouldn't use services that still used these tools. But Rights Management is OK to them, because it just allows them to track the music. I don't know about you but I don't want any tracking information in the music I buy, play and share.

10. they say they would allow people to opt out if they agreed to sign a document stating that you will never share music. Who would then enforce that? Police, other Government Agency, or civil litigation?

I will give them credit for thinking outside the box and getting the dialog started, however this just won't fly for Canada and definately not for many other jurisdictions.