Pay, Don't Sue, Song-Swappers, Trade Group Urges

[leQ]

Yahoo News

what a novel idea. like those eggo commercials: why didn't we think of that before?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Internet users could collect paychecks rather than lawsuits when they share music through "peer-to-peer" networks like Kazaa, under a proposal outlined by an industry trade group on Thursday.


Rather than losing millions of dollars in potential sales to online song swappers, the recording industry should give them a cut of the revenues when they distribute songs in a protected format, the Distributed Computing Industry Association said.


The scenario follows two others put forth by the trade group in an effort to forge peace between peer-to-peer networks and the major record labels that have hounded them and their users in court.

[brainshrub]

1. If I got paid to promote artists, I would

This could start a whole cottage-industry.

[asthmaticeog]

2. Not to be a cynic,

but I could see someone turning that into a pyramid scheme or MLM scam REALLY fast.

[Enraged_Ape]

3. I doubt an MLM scheme could be made out of this

People download songs because they're dead tired of the shyte being peddled to them as "music" on the radio and MTV. These downloaders are generally discriminating and actively seek out those--and only those--specific groups and genres that interest them. I really don't think that the Amway shotgun sales model would work on them.

[asthmaticeog]

4. I respectfully beg to differ

TONS of people download Britney/Eminem/whatever radio crap. If dowloading was just discriminating listeners on Epitonic seeking out the independent stuff (for example), the industry wouldn't give a damn.

Here's how an MLM scheme would work just fine for music downloading: it'd be exactly like Amway, the product restriction being that you'd only get paid for RIAA downloads. You'd recruit friends into your downline, first getting them to get tunes from you, then convincing them that they can make money off this too, and you, having recruited them, would get X% of their earnings in perpetuity, so in order to clear any cash themselves, they'd have to recruit their own downlines. Note that taste hasn't entered into this yet - it needn't. Most Amway suckers go through serious cognitive dissonance because so many Amway products are rubbish (so I'm told), so it's not about discriminating taste in product, it's about being gullible and greedy. The end result of this would be the same as any Ponzi scenario: maybe 25 people get incredibly rich, and countless thousands of others are transformed into horrible pains in the ass who constantly try to get people to buy their crap. And that's no different from the music industry as it already exists.

Edit: spelling
Edit again: more spelling. Dammit!