Is a Filesharing Tax the Way Forward?

Peter Mandelson may be advocating the criminalisation of upwards of 7 million people in the current consultation over filesharing (p2p), but the Canadians have entirely different proposals on the table:

The proposal is simple: in exchange for a monthly fee set by Canada’s copyright board Internet subscribers would be able to share music so long as its not for financial gain.

It wants the monthly fee to be voluntary since not everyone shares music online. However, subscribers would have to “sign an undertaking to pay a predetermined amount of damages if they are caught file-sharing.”

The SAC says the proposal is simply a matter of facing reality and trying to figure out a way to monetize P2P.

“The Songwriters Association of Canada believes—and Internet technical experts agree—that unauthorized file-sharing cannot be stopped without actually shutting down the Internet,” says Bill Henderson, VP of the SAC, in a op-ed for Straight.com. “Attempts to sue it out of existence are futile. They alienate our audience, and earn us no money.”

The article goes on to make an interesting point that good as this idea is, the fee would have to rise not just to cover music, but other electronic media, be they films, television or games. Then again if voluntary then those not illegally downloading wouldn’t even be caught by it. It’s an interesting proposal, far fairer and more practical than Mandelson’s draconian proposal of disconnection, but what do you think? Would the fee resolve the problem of paying artists for their ideas, or still perpetuate Big Media’s stranglehold over rights ownership?

(via Owen Blacker)