This is the rob blatt blog.

Here’s a quote to start us off:

Griffin’s idea is to collect a fee from internet service providers — something like $5 per user per month — and put it into a pool that would be used to compensate songwriters, performers, publishers and music labels. A collecting agency would divvy up the money according to artists’ popularity on P2P sites, just as ASCAP and BMI pay songwriters for broadcasts and live performances of their work.

That’s from Wired.com’s story Music Industry Proposes a Piracy Surcharge on ISPs.

At first, I was against the idea of paying what amounts to a “music tax”, because I don’t think that it should be my responsibility to help a business that is slowly killing itself. I really don’t want to give extra money to a business that uses every dirty tactic they can in order to make a dollar. To see how deep their heads are up their asses, read Don Reisinger’s interview with Cara Duckworth, the spokesperson for the RIAA titled The RIAA speaks–and it gets worse. But now my opinion has changed.

Why the change in heart over this $5 tax on my cable bill? Because the moment that it goes into place, I see this as a removal of the line between iTunes and The Pirate Bay. Once I’m paying monthly for pirated music on the internet, it’s okay for me to download whatever I want online because according to Jim Griffin who is a “Digital Strategist” (quotes are my emphasis, not his) this is “monetizing the anarchy.” So if the monetization begins, let the anarchy rule.

With all of my heart I am against making the provider of a utility (my cable company) responsible for the use of that utility. Here are a few unfair analogies that I came up with:

• Blaming the water company if person A drowns person B in the bathtub using their water
• Blaming the electric company for person A being electrocuted when sticking a fork in a light socket

But if they flip the switch on this, you can be damn sure that my music collection will expand to no end.