Collective licensing: the answer we keep getting to over time
Three years ago, EFF proposed a voluntary collective licensing system. (The Progress and Freedom Foundation didn't like it.) People who download music won't have to pay, but if they do pay some small monthly amount ($5), they'll be immune from infringement actions. The fee will be bundled into monthly access bills, and you'll scarcely notice it. If you're caught not paying, then you'll have to pay up.
This was/is similar to the fine work of Terry Fisher in Promises to Keep, first talked about several years ago.
Both EFF and Fisher have some mileage to cover: how to get all the music companies to sign up to a single collective rights society for online downloads, how to get the charges flowing, how to get the payments flowing back to labels (and maybe to artists, but we all know that labels get the royalties).
But it's clearly the answer, and we'll get there eventually. Just a lot of mudslinging between here and there. I realize that it isn't terribly bloggy to write about something that EFF and Fisher have been talking about for years, but it seems like a good moment to bring it up — what with all the lawsuits these days. Now that it's clear that other recording industry efforts just aren't working (WSJ headline: Sales of Music, Long in Decline, Plunge Sharply), maybe collective licensing will start to look like a better idea.
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Speaking of mudslinging, I'm in Lisbon for the next ICANN meeting. A huge list of issues:
Board decision on .xxx
DNS Root server attack
Management Operating Principles on Transparency and Accountability
MOU signings with new
Regional At Large Organizations
President’s Strategy
Committee final report
WHOIS
data
Registerfly
accreditation termination and broader discussion of accreditation processes
IDN
laboratory testing and next steps
ICANN Operating Plan
discussion
I'll try to keep up with things here, but check all of those more-open-these-days ICANN sites and blogs for information.
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If Collective licensing is 'clearly the answer' then would not individual licenses that allow sharing be even better?
Sharing is promoted as a social activity and 'true' sharing is just that. If one person puts some effort into or commits some resources towards providing another with something of value, the recipient can acknowledge this, and a true social exchange has taken place, a friendship strengthened.
We are repeatedly told that the marginal cost of sending content across the Internet is practically zero therefore the social benefit of sharing stuff on P2P networks etc. is, in turn, quite small. It is the artist who put up the initial resources and they are not the ones sharing hence very little social benefit.
Collective licenses, where legal sharers have to pay real money, could be a step in the right direction because they are committing resources to their social activity.
It would be even better though if they bought sharing licenses from individual artists because that way the chain of social 'effort' is that much more closely related and stronger bonds can be formed - artist to fan to general user.