French Taxpayers Forced to Subsidize the Music Industry
In their misguided fight against what they (as well as other governments and obviously those in the industry) wrongly call piracy, the French government has yet another plan, and this time they want to make it appear nice: People will be able to buy a card worth €50 for only €25, then use it to make music purchases on certain sites. Which you have to admit does sound pretty nice, doesn’t it?
Well, it’s not! Firstly, it’s not nice because the French government doesn’t create those funds out of thin air, but takes them out of what is available, which means out of the taxes paid by French citizens. Secondly, it’s not nice because it supports the music industry as it currently stands, encouraging it to continue the current model of business instead of pressuring it to change. What’s more, it in fact actually forces those who fight for copyright reform and legalized file-sharing to work against themselves, by financially supporting the very things they actively fight against!
The thing is that the concept itself is not bad. I actually strongly support the idea of such cards being made available in as many places as possible so people will be able to use them to charge on-line accounts and then use those accounts to easily and safely purchase digital goods even if they don’t have or simply don’t want to use credit or even debit cards. And exerting some amount of control over the shops that would accept such cards would help in ensuring potential buyers that they are safe to buy from, but also could and should be used to pressure them and the industry as a whole to change. Of course, in order for those shops to sign up to such a project they’d need some incentives, but those should be of a different nature.
In fact, those incentives are the first thing that’d need to be changed in this plan. Instead of the government matching the amount paid by the customer, financing the shop out of taxpayers’ money, the plan could call for reducing or even eliminating some taxes for the shops that agree to take part in the project and respect the terms and conditions. The amounts would need to be calculated to generate roughly the same increase in net profits as the current plan estimates, assuming those levels are the desired ones, so it won’t really make a difference for the shops or for the government’s coffers, but would make a world of difference when it comes to what the plan implies and how ethical it is. Quite simply, if the government would decide to take less money from such shops instead of paying them, the national budget would be hit in exactly the same way, but none of the other taxpayers’ money would go towards subsidizing this industry.
Yes, that’d mean that a card that costs €25 would also be worth exactly €25, but if the tax cuts would mean that the shops could expect similar profits if they’d halve prices it would be assumed that they’d do just that, because those who won’t do it will likely be kicked off the market by those who will. And there’s really no problem with halving prices for digital goods, especially when it comes to songs, because there are basically no costs associated with selling a copy of a song! (When it comes to software or movies, there are some costs associated with it due to file sizes that can even be 1000 times larger than those of songs, which means that the storage space and bandwidth requirements are also much greater, but even in those cases the costs are only a tiny fraction of the current prices and therefore halving said prices wouldn’t be much of a problem.)
After all, the idea should be to force the industry to change, so the terms and conditions should include such a drastic price reduction and not, as the plan currently specifies, simply set a maximum price that would most likely be in the general vicinity of the current prices. But, far more importantly, the first clause that needs to be included is that no shop could possibly be accepted unless the digital goods it sells include no form of DRM whatsoever and do not require the customer to download, install or run anything other than the program or media file they want in order to be able to obtain and use it! And there could also be a clause about a minimum download speed that needs to be guaranteed for all users so those with fast connections won’t need to wait far longer than they’re used to waiting in order to get the files they purchased.
These would be the changes this industry really needs: Make it easy and affordable for people to legally purchase and use digital goods, show that you are willing to meet them halfway, and plenty of them will do so, at least when it comes to the things that they feel are worth their money. That is, if the industry has any intention of ever again working with its customers and not against them, which really doesn’t seem to be the case in the least. Still, markets and governments should act in such a way as to protect the few companies that may still “see the light” when it comes to this and kick out all the others, not the other way around!
But, of course, it’s the industry that currently has a hold on the governments and makes the most out of the current crisis in order to force them to grant it additional benefits at the expense of everyone else, and this practice isn’t likely to change unless a very large number of people will very visibly and actively, possibly also violently if necessary, rebel against it. However, keep in mind that when you ask someone to change something you should also offer them something better to replace it with… So I for one am going to start working out the details of my own version of such a plan, even if only as a stepping stone towards what I really think should happen.
