Warner Music Proposes $5 Tax To Make All Music Downloading Legal

Warner Music, the third largest music label, is gunning for a $5/month music tax on U.S. residents. They’ve hired industry veteran Jim Griffin to create a new entity around the project, presumably to get other labels involved. Griffin threw out the idea of a $5/month tax (which would be added to people’s ISP bill), generating $20 billion/year in revenues. The tax won’t be mandatory, he implies. And he also said that it isn’t really a “tax”: “we have no such interest in government running this or having any part of it.” Griffin also talked about advertising subsidies for partners who don’t want to pay the fee. Users who are paying the tax will be able to download music from the Internet legally, through all the normal channels (BitTorrent, other P2P networks, etc.).
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/27/the-music-industrys-new-extortion-scheme/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/28/the-music-tax-details-of-the-plan-they-dont-want-you-to-know/