Musicians don’t understand economics

The EU’s copyright directive is going to require paying for links and will require the creation of expensive and error prone copyright filters. This means that search engines will have to start charging for searches. Google will either become a subscription service or will charge per search, or they will simply block all access to their services from the EU and exclude any site hosted in the EU from search results.

Most musicians are in favour of this. They imagine that they’re going to make more money. They will be disappointed. The money from the tax will go to politicians, who will spend it on vanity projects, expensive lunches and so on, not on musicians. And since everyone will have to pay for searches they will have less money to spend on music. Also, are people going to be able to find music when they have to pay searches or can’t do them cuz Google has declined to provide its services to EU countries? Anyone who thinks this is a good idea should read Bastiat, or Hazlitt or Reisman.