Legalize File Sharing

If we licensed music file sharing to the tune of a few bucks a month, we could keep the system, and artists would still get paid.

As you read this, 10 million songs are being file-shared.

Now, that’s not exactly new. It’s been going on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year for most of the last 10 years. Ten million songs at any given moment are being shared.

Despite years of lawsuits and other repressive measures against “pirates” to force them to stop sharing, there is no end in sight.

So while iTunes may sell a billion or so tunes this year, something like 40 billion songs will find their way across Limewire, Transmission networks, as well as be emailed, instant messaged, and shared using other easily available technologies. Over 95 per cent of the music people acquire over the internet gets to them by way of file sharing; a ratio of 40 to one “illegal” file shares over “legal” downloads.

And the folks who write, perform, and produce songs for a living won’t receive a red cent for all that wonderful music being enjoyed by so many millions of people.

As one of those creators of music, what do I think of all this? It’s almost all good, and with one small condition that I will get to in a moment, it certainly should be a perfectly legal activity.

First of all, those of us who actually write and perform and produce the music don’t call people who share music “pirates” or “criminals.” We call them our “audience” and our “fans.”

And we like file sharing. Here’s why:

Music file sharing is the freest, greenest, largest global distribution system for music of all kinds that has ever been invented in the history of the world. Nothing has ever delivered more music to more people in a more efficient and environmentally friendly manner.

Also, it’s a completely open system. Any artist can share their work and thereby offer it to the world. For the aspiring artist and songwriter it is a free, worldwide distribution system. No gatekeepers required.

For the music fan, what’s not to like about being able to access the world’s entire repertoire of music, something approaching 100 million unique songs? Every song you can think of, and many millions you can’t, are available for download. By contrast, iTunes offers fewer than 10 million songs.

In addition, music-sharing networks are the greatest living repository of music of all kinds in the history of the world. Record labels go bankrupt, warehouses full of tapes burn down, master recordings are thrown away or just fall apart through neglect and age. But the fans preserve and share the music they love. And so it survives for new generations to share and enjoy.

So, what’s missing?

A few dollars a month.

A license fee of as little as $4 or $5 could be bundled into monthly internet access fees. People who don’t music file share could opt out. The money would go into a pool and a pro rata distribution made to the artists, songwriters, and rights holders whose songs are being shared. Canada’s world-respected performance rights society, SOCAN, has been licensing broadcasters and making distributions using similar methodology for decades and could easily handle this new source of desperately needed revenue for creators.

If every Canadian household that houses music sharers paid that small license fee, something wonderful would happen: music creators could once again make a living.

And that’s the problem now. The vast majority of songwriters and artists are not rock stars and sadly don’t make anything remotely close to a living. This is particularly true of the new generation of music creators coming up. Because CD sales have fallen off a cliff, record labels have no money to sign and develop new artists.

By licensing music file sharing, the collapse of the music industry would give way to a musical renaissance, and artists and songwriters could spend their days writing and producing more great Canadian music to share with the world.