Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
It's not supposed to be "fair"... it's supposed to be a compromise. As such, it gets the job done (without it, we wouldn't have CD's).
I see nothing wrong with such "compromises," as long as it is so minor (a few cents per medium) as to be effectively invisible to the consumer. In fact, if such a thing could be applied to digital files themselves, it might solve some problems.
Imagine if your ISP could detect every instance that you e-mailed an e-book or music file to someone else (legal or not), and charged you a few cents per item (like your phone company charging you per text message). If the charge is small enough, no one is going to scream about a few cents extra on their bill. (Well, okay... a few of you surely will.) But anyone who disseminates large volumes of illegal e-books or music files won't stomach the huge ISP bills, and most will stop (or lose their account due to non-payment). Look, Ma... I just cut back on illegal file sharing!
There will surely be some who will try to find ISPs that will not charge that extra file, and ISPs who will decide not to charge the "upload tax." Publishers will know those ISP's, too, and will keep an eye on them, making file sharers easier to detect and isolate.
It's not what I'd call "fair"... but I would call it a good "compromise" to rein in illegal file sharing.
|
As long as the proceeds go to the artists/authors I have no problem with that. Personally, I'm not comfortable with the idea of having ISPs monitor the types of files I send. Big Brother and all that.
I've also read that some ISPs are going after their heavy users by charging them more instead of the flat rate. The heavy users aren't necessarily illegal file sharers but I'm sure that more than a few are. DH and I work at home and heavily use our ISP account. Power pig ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H ... I mean Power Point creates huge files that aren't readily compressed and consume large amounts of bandwidth.
I don't mind DRM as long as it doesn't lock me into a device or platform.