Your Water Authority analogy is crap too, El Greko. ;) Water is a basic necessity of life, not a priviledged commodity like the Internet and its data and content.

Besides we don't need an analogy here. The issue is pretty simple. The ISP provides a connection to the Internet. That's all. What you do with it is YOUR responsibility. That keeps the Net free and easy as far as speech & content--just the way we like it. And yes, I agree that means that a lot of bad stuff comes with that freedom (kiddie porn, hate literature, snuff films, other stuff I don't even want to think about or know about), but that's the price you pay for freedom. If that stuff is illegal or immoral or whatever society decides is wrong and dangerous, you punish the user at his/her end and the provider of the content at the other end. You don't take the attitude that because this stuff is out there, then you must assume everybody is using it and so you can punish everybody equally.

That's essentially what SOCAN wants to do. Jeri is right about their motives; they are looking to find the lost revenue somewhere and the ISPs are an easy target.

I'm not slamming SOCAN. They are a good non-profit organization and try to do their best for artists. I just think this move is unfair. It would force the ISPs to raise their rates, thus punishing ALL users of the Internet for the actions of a few... telling Mr & Mrs. Fixed Income who have finally gotten on the Net to be able to get e-mailed pictures of their new grandchild that their rates are now quadrupling because Kyle next door wants to trade an MP3 of Junkdog Poop Daddy's new song Muthafucka Bitch Ho Nizzle with his schoolfriends.

Besides, you can bet your ass none of that money SOCAN would gets from the action would get to any of the smaller artists and groups... certainly not folkies and indie artists. It would all go to making Shania Twain and David Foster richer. How would they be able to monitor which artists' music was being downloaded and figure out how to distribute the monies equitably? They can't even do that now with all the radio and TV stations out there.