Taxing music

February 9th, 2009

The Isle of Man is considering implementing a plan that allows people to download unlimited music in return for a basic tax to ISP’s of £1.00 per month, in an effort to find a way to solve illegal music piracy.

The idea is that this money is collectively redistributed to copyright holders.

Eric Pfanner writes

The Isle of Man did not event this idea. The concept of a so-called blanket license to distribute music digitally has been discussed since the days at the turn of the century when Napster, before its rebirth as a legal service, defied the music industry.

Although, in Sharing drives economies we did point to a recent study conducted by the Dutch government that found that in fact sharing enabled a lift in music sales.

The Dutch government, in cooperation with the Dutch research institute TNO, has recently conducted a survey into the economic effects of file sharing on the music industry. The results are quite surprising as they’ve concluded that illegally downloading music (which is allowed in Holland) has a positive effect on the music industry.

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