> The smartest members of the music industry (but not, alas, the influential ones) have said for years that the realistic way forward is a blanket licensing scheme: Each of us gets the right to download and play whatever we want, and in return we're legally obligated to pay an annual fee to some ASCAP-like organization that divides the money up among music publishers. Now, I like this idea, but the obvious downside is: Who is a music publisher, and how do we figure out how to divide the money?
As you point out, lots of people have proposed system along these lines. And there does appear to be a problem that needs solving (e.g. less news means less oversight of politicians, means more political corruption). There are a lot of quesestions that schemes like this need to answer, such as:
If we do this for music, why not othrer sorts of content such as films, TV shows, news, software, games, etc?
I don't listen to music / am not interested in X type of content, why should I have to pay for it?
How do we prevent people from gaming the system? e.g. a musician might pay a botnet to download multiple copies of their work.
As you point out, lots of people have proposed system along these lines. And there does appear to be a problem that needs solving (e.g. less news means less oversight of politicians, means more political corruption). There are a lot of quesestions that schemes like this need to answer, such as:
If we do this for music, why not othrer sorts of content such as films, TV shows, news, software, games, etc?
I don't listen to music / am not interested in X type of content, why should I have to pay for it?
How do we prevent people from gaming the system? e.g. a musician might pay a botnet to download multiple copies of their work.
I've attempted to answer these questions here: http://cabalamat.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/a-broadband-tax-fo...