SONGWRITERS CALL FOR AN INTERNET FEE AS COMPENSATION

MATHEW INGRAM
globeandmail.com

As sales of CDs continue to plummet, record companies and artists alike are trying to think of ways to change the industry's traditional business models. Radiohead and other bands are giving their music away, Universal is bundling songs with Nokia cellphones and Prince is suing everyone he can get his hands on.

In the U.S., lawsuits seem to be the dominant response to downloading, while Canada has the "private copying levy," which adds a fee to the cost of blank CDs, and uses the money raised to compensate artists.

Now, a group of Canadian artists wants to take that idea and extend it even further: In an open letter to the government, the artists behind the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) say they would like a $5-a-month levy to be imposed on anyone with Internet access, with that revenue going to musicians whose music is being illegally downloaded.

The letter, which appears on the SAC website, says the group's members, including musicians such as Bill Henderson of Chilliwack and Randy Bachman of the Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive, believe that "the time has come to put in place a reasonable and unobtrusive system of compensation for creators of music in regard to this popular and growing use of their work."

The SAC says that, under its plan, "no one would be sued for the online sharing of songs. On the contrary, the sharing of music on peer-to-peer networks and similar technologies would become perfectly legal. In addition, music publishers and record labels would be fairly compensated for the crucial role they play in supporting Canadian music creators."

The letter goes on to say the association sees file sharing as "both a revolution in music distribution and a very positive phenomenon [and] all that's needed to fulfill this revolution in distribution is a way for creators and rights holders to be paid."

The SAC's proposal will be a hard sell, however. Not only does it penalize the vast majority of Internet users who don't download music illegally, it penalizes those who download lawfully through iTunes and other services since they would pay twice.

In some discussion groups and forums, the fee is already being referred to as a tax. On one music-fan site, the SAC is referred to as representing "greedy" songwriters, and on another the association is described as "punishing everyone for the sins of the few."

Members of a popular music-industry mailing list have raised a number of issues, including the question of what counts as an Internet connection (i.e., mobile, wireless, etc.) and who gets to administer the money.

According to Billboard magazine, which used a survey by Yankee Group showing more than seven million Internet accounts in Canada in 2007, such a fee could raise about $500-million if it were imposed.