House analogy
I haven’t been writing on the subject recently, but I have still been keeping up on the internet radio issue. There have been some developments that I want to address at some point, such as last month’s day of silence protest and SoundExchange’s recent demand for webcasters to implement DRM with their radio streams to receive SoundExchange’s recent concessions. Before then, though, I’d like to respond to one article I read last week, and perhaps try to explain my position in a new way.
The article I bookmarked was titled “Recording industry threat looms over Net radio,” written by Sherwin Siu, and posted on CNET. There are plenty of articles that gives the same perspective on this issue, but in just a few sentences Siu was able to sum up the biggest misconception people have about this internet radio royalty issue. He wrote (emphasis mine):
Webcasters, who provide the public with Internet radio by streaming music over the Web, are required by law to pay royalties to SoundExchange, a collecting society that distributes those fees to record labels and artists. Those royalty rates are set by the U.S. Copyright Office.
If this were true, I would be against the high CRB royalty rate. However, it is not true that webcasters are required by law to pay royalties to SoundExchange. Paying SoundExchange for the right to play music is only one of many options webcasters have. They can ask for permission from the music artists or label themselves, they can play music in the public domain, or they can play their own music. If the SoundExchange option is taken away, either by a prohibitive rate (such as the CRB’s incredible rate increase this year) or by the government exiting the music business (which we should all want eventually), music artists, labels, and webcasters will still be free to do business with one another. Just like they would in a free market.
But I’ve said this already before, haven’t I? Well, I thought of an analogy that might make this issue more understandable. My wife and I are in the process of buying our first home, and I think there’s a way to relate the internet royalty rate to buying a home.
In a free market, home buyers and sellers would be able to negotiate between each other to establish a mutual agreement about what the house will sell as. A potential buyer can make an offer, a seller can accept or reject it, and the house will only change hands when both parties agree to make the transaction. That’s the fair, easiest way to do it.
Now, imagine if Congress passed a law that required a government agent to sit in on every negotiation between home buyers and sellers. If the two parties cannot agree on a deal, the government agent would allow the potential buyer to buy the seller’s home for a low, government-set rate. That would be great for home buyers, because they’d have great leverage over the home seller. Either the seller accepts the rate or the buyer uses the government to take the house for a low cost. But what does that mean for the seller and his right to sell his property for what he wants?
Now pretend that the government changed the house-purchase rate one day and set it to a high amount that no buyer would want to pay. There would still be government intrusion in the market, but no buyer would want to take the government’s offer. It would not be as good as a total free market, but people would still be free to make their own deals. I know there are a lot of differences between houses and intellectual property like music, but if you replace “house” with “music” and you essentially have the same issue.
Tags: [internet radio]Ugly way to put it
I listened to the Neal Boortz show yesterday. A self-described liberal woman called the show to discuss socialized medicine. Neal explained when she claims that someone has a right to the services of a doctor, that doctor has legally lost a portion of his time, money, and life. Her reply to him was so bad I had to quickly open notepad and write it down. She replied:
“That’s an ugly way to put it.”
She later said that it sounds so much better if you just say that you believe people have a right to health care. She also said that she wished she was smart enough to debate it with Neal and that if we have a right to education and legal council, why not health care? Near the end of her call, she admitted that she “thinks more with her heart instead of her brain.”
This phone call reminded me of a debate I had with my sister in my pre-Objectivist days. The subject of public education and roads came up, and I was (unfortunately) the person who was arguing for them. I gave all of the default answers, trying to explain to my Objectivist sister all of the benefits society receives by having the government take care of them. She didn’t convince me that I was wrong that day, but she knocked a lot of holes in my arguments for me to try to fill later. As I thought more and more about it, I realized that I couldn’t claim that I was for people being free to live their lives and at the same time be an advocate for forcing people to do something. The inconsistency between the two positions was something that I had to resolve by picking one or the other. I couldn’t have both.
I’ve debated proponents of socialized health care, and many of them treat the issue the same as this woman did. When they as confronted with the fact that what they advocate can only happen by taking from somebody else, they’ll admit that it doesn’t sound good but then they stop. They don’t continue on and choose one of the two incompatible positions, freedom or non-freedom with the illusion of “free” health care. They just float between the two. It seems that half of the battle for free-market health care is to get people to be intellectually honest. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. You can’t have freedom and have the government forcing you to make the right decisions in your life.
I don’t know the woman who called the show beyond what she said during that call so I probably don’t know at what stage she is in her thinking (though, I think I might be able to make a good guess). I can say, though, that Neal exposed the inconsistency in her position in the same way my sister exposed mine. I hope it was enough to make her think long about what she really is advocating.
Tags: [boortz, health care]300
I’ve had another busy week again, but not busy enough to keep me from buying 300 and watching it for the third time. I’m going to watch it again this weekend with the commentary on, but I’m a little worried that the makers of the movie are going to ruin it for me. It would be very disappointing if I hear that the movie makers didn’t have the good ideas I thought they did when they made the movie.
If you haven’t seen the movie yet, you really should see it. Yes, it is a somewhat-gory action movie, but there are a lot of good ideas to be found in it. I can’t think of another movie that I’ve gotten more out of in the past ten years than this one.
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