A new study commissioned by the European Union has finally proven what many have suspected all along: internet users don't want to pay for content.

A survey of UK youngsters finds that the only paid music service to interest them is a subscription for unlimited permanent downloads—streaming just isn't good enough, and buying individual songs is too expensive to appeal.

http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/08/uks-youth-would-pay-for-all-yo...

What can musicians do when nobody wants to buy their records anymore? Just take a glance into the World Wide Web and it’s clear to see: opportunities for becoming famous there have never been greater. But when it comes to making money, that’s when things get difficult. [...]

Jeremie Zimmermann, a net activist from Paris, who campaigns against the French law for Internet bans, which threatens users caught sharing files three times with a cap on their online access for a period of several months, no longer believes the concept of earning money with “1:1” copies, as he calls them, works. “It’s over, finished”, the 31-year old says. The digital era has simply made it too easy to reproduce content without any loss in quality and too difficult to explain to today’s users why they should pay money for digital content. He even has an idea at the ready how artists will be able to make a living in future. People are still willing to pay good money for events, concerts, meetings with stars or even merchandising.

Trying to stop people sharing copyrighted material over the internet is a game of cat and mouse in which the pirates will always win and calls for internet service providers to halt illegal file sharing are "naive", according to the boss of Carphone Warehouse.

Instead, Charles Dunstone said, the solution is education about the benefits of respecting copyright coupled with services that allow consumers "to get content easily and cheaply". [...]

The French National Assembly ignored a vote last week by the European Parliament and approved its "Cr?ation et Internet" three-strikes bill on Tuesday.

The measure supported by French President Nicolas Sarkozy punishes digital pirates by suspending Internet service if they are caught illegally sharing copyrighted material. The vote comes a little more than a month after the same government body rejected the proposal.

Musicians including Robbie Williams, Annie Lennox, Billy Bragg, Blur's David Rowntree and Radiohead's Ed O'Brien said last night that the public should not be prosecuted for downloading illegal music from the internet.

The Featured Artists Coalition, which consists of 140 of Britain's biggest rock and pop stars, said at its inaugural meeting that companies such as MySpace and YouTube should be required to remunerate the artists when they use their music for advertising.

Markus Beckdahl from Netzpolitik interviewed Philippe Aigrain, co-founder of la Quadrature about the future of the culture in the digital environment. Philippe Aigrain answers questions on the proposals developed in his book "Internet & Creation" (presently only in French, extended English edition in the works).

Tax haven the Isle of Man, with a population of around 80,000, wants to introduce a compulsory blanket licence for music downloads. Broadband ISP subscribers would pay a "nominal" compulsory tax, but be able to share music legally.

Surprisingly, the proposal has won approval from the chief executive of the BPI, Geoff Taylor.

"At the end of the day, we are not going to stop piracy, so let's embrace it," the Manx government's inward investment minister Ron Berry told the MidemNet conference this weekend.