The Music/Movie industry is opposed to people downloading stuff of the internet because they cant make money off it. This is crazy because downloadable content is the form that many people want to enjoy movies or music. So we need to find a method that allows the public to download content as we do now without worrying about the legality of it, and also a way to pay Music/Movie companies for the product they produce.
Thinking about this problem, I came up with this:
We add a $1 charge to monthly internet fees for each user around the world. This is siphoned off by ISP's. This can go into a fund (hereafter called Music Payment Fund or MPF) that can be used to pay each Music/Movie company a certain amount when an item is downloaded. Sites like Utorrent etc will keep records of what people are downloading (easily done) and send these records to the MPF so that they can pay the appropriate company.
This way we get downloads for very little money. Record/movie companies get cash for the product where they wouldnt have previously.
Looking at the figures. Total number of internet users = 1,018,057,389 (2005 figures, so is probably larger now)
If each user payed an extra $1 per month we would have a grand total of $12.2 billion/year.
Total sales from the music industry (2005) amounted to approx $12.3 billion This includes CD's, DVDs etc. Downloadable content would be a fraction of this as many people still want to buy CD's, so lets say 1/3 of the MPF ($4.1 billion) could go to the record companies for music downloads.
Total sales of DVD's for 2005 is $15 billion. If I am anything to go by, people like to buy and rent DVD's, so a rough idea for funds that may go to Movie industry for downloads would be 1/3 of the MPF collected as well ($4.1 billion again).
That would leave the remaining $4.1 billion for the TV show downloads, admin costs, whatever.
The Pros in this situation are obvious : we can download whatever we like, and "The Man" is still happy at little cost to us.
The Cons are many:
1.Getting every user in the world to pay $1 per month would be hard to set up.
2. Poor countries will be slugged more in comparison to rich countries.
3. People that dont download will be paying an extra $1 for nothing.
etc, please add more when you think of them.
Obviously it will never happen. My figures are probably not that accurate, but I did this more as en exercise to show how a system like this could be run. What are your thoughts?
Thinking about this problem, I came up with this:
We add a $1 charge to monthly internet fees for each user around the world. This is siphoned off by ISP's. This can go into a fund (hereafter called Music Payment Fund or MPF) that can be used to pay each Music/Movie company a certain amount when an item is downloaded. Sites like Utorrent etc will keep records of what people are downloading (easily done) and send these records to the MPF so that they can pay the appropriate company.
This way we get downloads for very little money. Record/movie companies get cash for the product where they wouldnt have previously.
Looking at the figures. Total number of internet users = 1,018,057,389 (2005 figures, so is probably larger now)
If each user payed an extra $1 per month we would have a grand total of $12.2 billion/year.
Total sales from the music industry (2005) amounted to approx $12.3 billion This includes CD's, DVDs etc. Downloadable content would be a fraction of this as many people still want to buy CD's, so lets say 1/3 of the MPF ($4.1 billion) could go to the record companies for music downloads.
Total sales of DVD's for 2005 is $15 billion. If I am anything to go by, people like to buy and rent DVD's, so a rough idea for funds that may go to Movie industry for downloads would be 1/3 of the MPF collected as well ($4.1 billion again).
That would leave the remaining $4.1 billion for the TV show downloads, admin costs, whatever.
The Pros in this situation are obvious : we can download whatever we like, and "The Man" is still happy at little cost to us.
The Cons are many:
1.Getting every user in the world to pay $1 per month would be hard to set up.
2. Poor countries will be slugged more in comparison to rich countries.
3. People that dont download will be paying an extra $1 for nothing.
etc, please add more when you think of them.
Obviously it will never happen. My figures are probably not that accurate, but I did this more as en exercise to show how a system like this could be run. What are your thoughts?