The Electronic Frontier Foundation has proposed a scheme to decriminalize
file-swapping, whereby users would pay $5 a month in license fees. The
annual $3 billion this would net would compensate artists and record labels,
the group says. San Jose Mercury News (2/26), Wired (2/26)
Posted on Thu, Feb. 26, 2004
License to allow music downloading proposed
By Dawn C. Chmielewski
Mercury News
A leading Internet advocacy group Wednesday proposed legalizing
online file-sharing through a voluntary music license that would compensate
artists -- and decriminalize the actions of millions of music fans.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation called on the music industry
to form a new collection agency to issue file-sharing licenses for a monthly
fee. The group said a fee of as little as $5 a person would net an estimated
$3 billion annually for the music industry, which currently earns no revenue
from the billions of songs exchanged through unlicensed services such as
Kazaa. And it would entitle the estimated 60 million Americans who use
file-trading services to continue swapping songs without fear of lawsuits.
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Dan says:
Well, this is a perfect way to make sure the status quo is maintained and
record companies continue to ad no value but receive compensation. Paypal
and micropayments have been horribly remiss in not developing adiquate
solutions to small payments.
ASCAP and BMI do a perfectly horrible job of finding the smaller artistic
providers and redistributing income to them. They use a statistical model
for auditing. Would you like to be paid based in a 3% sample of your
efforts, randomly selected?
I appreciate the best intention of do-gooders. It seems unfortunate
micropayment systems seem to limp so badly.
regards to all,
Dan