Websites should pay musicians

China will implement its first copyright protection rules for online music on July 1. But this will not bring real tangible change to China's cyberspace music landscape, says an article in the 21st Century Business Herald. Excerpts:

Chinese Internet users are used to downloading music for free. Some musicians propose charging a copyright fee for each song downloaded from the Internet. It sounds reasonable in legal terms, but is not realistic in practice. Even in the developed economies, where intellectual property rights protection is more advanced, this model has not been successful yet.

There are three difficult problems to solve in China to improve the protection of musicians' legal rights.

First, popular will is against such charges, because netizens in China have enjoyed free music online for such a long time that it will be difficult to make them accept the new rules.

Second, technology is a problem. The history of the Internet is one of innovation as well as a battle between technology and control. It is very difficult technically to charge network users for each song downloaded from the Internet.

Third, without practical means of execution, the laws and rules protecting musicians' intellectual property rights will be meaningless. It is very difficult for musicians to defend their rights without practicable legal support.

Many websites have a mature business model to profit from customers. These websites should share their income with the musicians according to the download volume of their music.