RIAA surcharge on ISP access to P2P technology that will cost you five dollars

Back room deals being proposed at SXSW is that ISP’s start charging a five dollar surcharge per customer at the ISP level, baked into the price of access to the ISP. If this is a flat rate hike across to board to feed the RIAA money machine, this is not so interesting. Nor is everyone going to want to subsidize other people’s P2P habits just to make RIAA happy. Most everyone is going to be OK with money going to artists, few will be happy with money going to RIAA.

RIAA and other collection agencies though have a poor habit of paying artists in the longer run through. That won’t be my concern, but artists should be carefully looking at how they manage the whole process now, to make sure they get their cut of the pie. With some 238 million internet users in the USA, at five dollars a pop some 1.19 billion dollars into the music industry, this is not a small sum of money.

Behind closed doors, however, MIDEM attendees discussed the prospect of collecting money from ISPs instead. An invitation-only meeting on the subject drew about 50 people, including representatives of IFPI, Sony BMG, T-Mobile, the giant European ISP and mobile-carrier Orange, and performing-rights organizations like BMI. The response, according to Jenner, “ranged from ‘What do we do now?’ to ‘It sounds good, but can it possibly work?’ A lot of people are like rabbits in the headlights: They’re terrified they’re going to lose their jobs. No one dares to feel that this might be the solution.” Wired

While few will feel pity for RIAA, or the big music companies that support them in their ill advised and enormously unpopular campaign against P2P (and looking like new technology in general), this might eb the one way that people can be made happy on both sides. It just all depends on if the Big Five music companies can reel in their Rottweiler, and actually make this happen.

Not too happy about subsidizing my neighbors P2P habits, but it might just make P2P all the more popular as well. We just need to make sure that the artists get a cut of that 1.19 billion dollars, because that is really what music is all about.

tags: riaa,mpaa,ifpi,big five music,p2p,bittorrent,money,isp,surcharge,tax