So that part has to be worked out by the artists and some mechanism needs to be in place before they publish the song. Someone needs to collect the money, distribute the money to the artists, and track the payments for the artists’ legal/tax purposes.

I think some sort of new or existing Performance Rights Organization (BMI, ASCAP, etc) or Copyright Collection Society (CCC, PRS, etc) needs to be fully engaged with any A2F2A effort.

1) You can pay for strictly controlled access to the art, like buying a CD in a store or a ticket to a performance.

2) You can pay for more loosely controlled access by buying a pass to a festival or using the iTunes store where you know you can buy any song for $.99.

3) You can pay on a voluntary basis, like going to a free show and making a donation or buying merchandise as you enter or leave, or through pledge drives like public radio or television in the US.

With free P2P technology, solutions 1 and 2 (the levy thing falls into the solution 2 category) become unenforceable. So solution 3 is what we’re after. This can work, but it needs to be an organized effort. Volunteers need to advocate for the system. We need software to keep track of how much we’ve payed, and for what. Wouldn’t it be amazing if buying music (or other media) fell in the category of a tax exempt contribution to the arts?

And to do the ampersand in the above I used &

And to do the ampersand in the above, if to end this recursion we substitute @ for ampersand, I used @amp;amp; (@=&)

Thanks for adding the part about “strong” and “emphasis”. There are indeed lots of fonts that don’t have bold or italic offerings.

One question for ya:
How did you use the pointed brackets in your examples, without them being taken as actual tags and disappear from view?

In essence, the system I’m envisioning takes already existing public data and uses it for better levy distribution. You can still share with your friends, and not all sharing will (or needs to be, frankly) noted in the aggregate – this is just to *better* rather than *perfectly* distribute levy funds.

” I noted this deficiency, and argued for the need for more in depth tracking mechanisms. I agree that this is presently a problem, and offered a possible solution to reform levy organizations. ”

The entities that benefit the most from a lack of proper tracking methods currently control key decisionmakers and thus have no incentive to work on proper tracking. This is precisely why they push for more of these cash dumps. The only way to force them into the future is to stop giving them even more money without any accountability. End the levies. When the money dries up then maybe they will start looking at current proven models.

Dreddsnik, Christopher…

Something else to keep in mind… We don’t want to be “tracked in depth”, or to develop better tracking methods. Even if you said it would just be in aggregate and anonymised, it still has to be gathered, and we don’t want it.

One reason for getting files through sharing is that it isn’t necessarily tracked in any way, it isn’t necessary to sign up, give information like an email address, or use a bank account etc, it can be anonymous. Even when it can be visible (e.g. peers on a bittorrent network)… There’s just so much of it, and people also share in other ways, by swapping media, and on closed networks.

We do not want tracking methods mandated by “rights-holders”, we want the option to use and share with our friends without having to go through that. If money is changing hands, that’s not the same, and one of the reasons why copyright enforcement of direct commercial use (selling copies) is capable of being somewhat effective is that there’s a money trail to follow.

Italic as in ‘emphasis’ is emphasised text. Bold as in strong is strengthened text.