There's a levy on PCs, mp3 players and blank CDs and DVDs, which is passed on to the SGAE, the royalty-collection agency, for distribution to copyright holders in the same proportion as legitimate sales.

The flipside is that punters are allowed to make copies of copyrighted digital material for personal, not-for-profit use with impunity.

And that, in case anyone was wondering, is why there are now so many open filesharing websites, not just torrents, with .es domains. It's now reached the stage where the members of one Spanish Web forum have uploaded high-bitrate mp3s of every single one of the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, and there's nothing the "industry" can legally do about it. (In a test case last year the court ruled that uploading to p2p networks falls within the ambit of "personal, not-for-profit use".)

Taxing ISPs because people use the Internet to do things you don't like is like taxing paper manufacturers because people use paper to print things you don't like. The Internet is just a medium, and an aid to democracy, in the same way that paper is. Imagine how powerful you would be if you could completely control the printed word. Its no wonder music and film industries are pushing for this type of power with the Internet. Lets hope they don't get it.

its often useful to have the right to sue or take action. You don't want to and you rarely do but its useful for managing behaviours. I think the music industry needs to be mindful of this - if they charge a levy and then its open house on rights to use (and why shouldn't it be, I will have paid for them when I have bought a levied item) they may find that they sell themselves for a short term gain. And their moral argument (which they make heavy handedly) is gone.

It is diffcult to feel sorry for the music industry - they resell the same stuff in slightly repackaged form. They issue boxsets with stuff that wasn't good enough to release the first time round. They have only got competitive on pricing because they had to. All of this takes the punter for granted.

They should be looking at creative ways to add value to the product (packaging for example) and keep it as an art and not just as media files. Not looking to maintain the status quo. Cue Dylan song title.....

I rather feel that unless you are passing off music as your own, using it to make money or distributing it en masse free of charge then no-one should worry.

We know it is absurd that mix tapes are illegal and compilation CDs - yet there it is. Podcasters cannot legally put tracks on their broadcasts and we even have to harrangue to play 20 second clips - the legal ststus of this is debatable.

If I buy a CD that object is mine and I should be able to lend it out or reproduce it for moderate use. I should not be able to claim it is mine or generate revenue however.

We fans care most about the artist. We would never want them out of pocket or artistically compromised, but be honest, other than Metallica it is not the artist objecting to the free use of their ideas, it is the weasels of publishers, distributers and RC's with their fingers in the pie and noses in the trough. Home taping isn't killing music, it is these money-fixated arseholes.

Am I mad and the world sane or what?

it needs resolving, as some website do use stuff other people made for their own benefit.

After seeing it mentioned here I visit the "hypemachine" site and was a little disappointed as it is just a way of people getting music for free. As you can bypass visiting peoples blogs (and therefore lose any extra context, fan promotion etc) and just download tracks. I found one band I like's entire new lp just posted, no blurb, no rants, no "cathedral of sound nonsense".

Someway that the artists benefit from this is essential. Also I know record companies aren't always held in great light but the filtering effect they produce is essential along with mags , radio so that some of dross get's weeded out.

Lastly the whole levy on equipment is strange when Sony etc make players and sell music isn't this an internal accounting procedure?

they'll be after the electricity generation industry, looking for a levy based on the number of KiloWattHours used to power the devices we use to download music, films, TV programmes and what have you.

find that idea in a folder left on a train, Vulpes? Not beyond the bounds of credibility in these times.
Good piece of 'let's fight the man' publicity from Dunstone. (Who always reminds me of the bloke from Peep Show). Raises his profile with ver kids no end, and won't harm the huge campaign in place by Talk Talk to overcome the poor customer service tag they acquired. Hey, he's on OUR side everyone and you can get the new iphone from him!
Good luck to him too, because his riposte is entirely sensible and he could do himself an enormous amount of good by making a stand. He's a shrewd businessman though, so will eventually do what's best for his company.
Ironic that Virgin are already giving in, isn't it? That's a fucked brand name now in respect of music, anyway.
There is a slow creep of successful attacks on downloads after government pressure. Look at the credit card companies withdrawing from Allofmp3 etc as another instance.
We're steadily becoming a more and more unpleasant place in terms of governmental & corporate snooping, surveillance, taxes & interfering officialdom. How's life and broadband speed in Spain now, Archie? Should we be buying our plane tickets?

I see iTunes moving to a subscription service at some point in the future, where you pay your £15 a month, or whatever it might be, and you have access to the entire library, although I have yet to figure out how the hell this would work in terms of remuneration for the artists - although I figure they're going to be making their money on the live circuit anyway (see my post above) so it may not be an issue.

The idea of paying an extra tax on my blank media (which the record companies would pocket) makes me mad.

I make my own music, some of which has been released on micro labels (neo-classical/weird folk/ambient doesn't sell too well, surprisingly) but i haven't made any money from it - it's a hobby. the number of copies sold is vastly outnumbered by the blank cds burned of the rough mixes for the other band members and the blank DVDs i use to make backups of the project files. This has nothing to do with the record companies, has it?

the idea of paying extra for a hard drive that i might use to store the music i've payed for is stupid. ditto my mp3 players.

either the record industry is stupid, or it thinks we are.