Posted: 22nd Jan, 2009 By: MarkJ
The Isle of Man's e-commerce minister, Tim Craine, has revealed further details about the Island governments plans to offer a blanket legal file sharing (P2P) service (
here) to residents. This would be charged at a set fee of 1Euro extra per year, though an opt-out would be offered for those that don't download music:
"
If you take a Euro a year from millions, then that's a lot of revenue," Craine told
The Register. "
You have to create an entry level that tempts people off illegal downloads or this just isn't going to work. We've got to be aware of how we sell this, and what the public reaction is going to be. We've got to convince the public this is a positive move."
In principal such a scheme is interesting but in practice 1Euro per year is not a lot compared to the £1bn of legal music revenue per annum. It would also be very difficult to manage unless a specific service was offered to handle downloads. We can't imagine iTunes being very happy about that, not to mention all of the other online stores.
Naturally the music industry has already given the idea a hostile reception, though that doesn't mean to say a trial won't be run. Likewise some parts of the plan could have merit but we will require further details before being able to draw any real conclusions.