Virgin’s ISP over in the UK has announced that they will start allowing customers to download all the music in Universal’s catalog that they want beginning before the holiday season this year. For what the company is claiming will cost “a couple of albums a month” on peoples’ bills, users will be able to download a limitless number of DRM-free songs. Virgin is also saying that they will be working with other music labels to get them onto this system; said one official ”If you have unlimited MP3s, as much as you could possibly want to get, why would anyone go anywhere else?”
As good as this sounds, Virgin’s plan fails to take into account users who do not listen to music. As of now, it seems that the only alternative to paying for the unlimited plan is to pay for “an entry level plan.” But for a large percentage of people, this is more or less a a tax paid directly not to the government, but to the record labels. Everyone who uses the internet is not pirating music, nor are they necessarily listening to music at all. So charging them for something they are not buying is unfair.
Virgin is right to understand that a subscription model will do wonders to combat piracy. But just allowing the record companies to collect money from anyone and everyone is signing an agreement saying that yes, everyone who uses the internet is a pirate. Despite all the music label barnstorming, does anyone really think that this is true?
- Original story via BBC
