Music Industry Proposes a Piracy Surcharge on ISPs: An interesting article about a plan that Big Media is warming up to. It was proposed a long time ago, but immediately dismissed.
Griffin’s idea is to collect a fee from internet service providers – something like $5 per user per month – and put it into a pool that would be used to compensate songwriters, performers, publishers and music labels. A collecting agency would divvy up the money according to artists’ popularity on P2P sites, just as ASCAP and BMI pay songwriters for broadcasts and live performances of their work.
The entire tone of the article indicates that the RIAA is on the verge of giving up, meaning they’ve been stone-cold beaten by the market. They tried to stop file-sharing, but they’re no better off than they were.
Meanwhile, the industry’s antipiracy efforts appear more and more futile. Digital rights management, long touted as a solution, has been all but abandoned.
I wasn’t aware of this, but I’m glad they’ve finally woken up the fact that DRM will never work.