Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

You know, I have seen a lot of proposals -- personally, I am a big favor of Larry Lessig's "Let's go back to a 14 year base copyright renewable indefinitely for $1 a year" plan. Billionare Media Man Mark Cuban today, however, goes WAY farther than even the crazy "IP communists" have talked about:

I’m often hard on the RIAA. I don’t like the amount of political power they have in DC and at the state level. That said, I do believe in their right to protect the intellectual property of their members.

There are laws in place that allow them to sue in civil court for damages. There are laws on the books that allow the government to pursue criminal charges. I don’t agree with all the elements of these laws, and I am absolutely against the introduction of any new laws, but the laws in place are there and as such, the RIAA has the right to see them applied.

Music has value. Absolutely no question about it. Music sales are a source of income that its creators have every right to earn. It’s because of this value and the income opportunity that the RIAA’s members pay it what amounts to millions of dollars per year. It’s that money that has allowed the RIAA to file about 10,300 lawsuits since September 2003.

I have no problem with that at all.

Unfortunately, the payments by the RIAA member labels don’t pay for the entire expense of enforcing copyright law and processing RIAA lawsuits. For every law passed, there is a cost to get from concept to adoption. For every lawsuit filed, there is a cost to the municipality, state or federal district where the lawsuit is filed. Tax monies, whether they are local, state or federal pay for those costs. As they should.

The missing link here is the source of the tax money.

We pay property taxes. We pay use taxes. We pay sales tax. We pay income taxes. Beyond taxes, we pay fees. We pay a fee for our drivers license, our passport, and I don’t know how many other fees that go from our bank accounts to every level of government. In exchange we get some level of service that enable our public servants to protect, honor and serve and to support our system.

I don’t like the idea that my tax money goes to subsidize the 10,300 lawsuits the RIAA has filed since Sept of 2003. How much money does it take from taxpayers to pay for the courts side of the lawsuits? I’m guessing, but with all the administrative people and lawyers involved, judges, their clerks, overhead, and who knows what else is involved. Is 20,000 dollars per lawsuit too high or too low? Could it be 100k dollars each? I don’t know.

BlogMaverick has his proposal to counter this cost...