To reiterate, I see this as a temporary solution, a stopgap on the way to ubiquitous Wi-Fi/broadband/subscription access. Celestial Jukebox, dude. I’m telling you.

Hopefully this will change now that they’re dropping the lawsuits. To my mind, that’s a huge admission of failure on the part of the RIAA and an admittance of the futility of trying to treat customers like criminals.

The biggest roadblock I see in the ISP surchase scenario is big business. Nearly all companies have policies about their employees downloading copyrighted materials, so I’m sure they wouldn’t want to have to pay an extra premium in their already high networking costs so that teenage kids can download the latest Jonas Brothers album.

Jay: I think there will be increased value in difficult-to-duplicate tokens and artifacts, but it will never be enough to even come close to replacing the revenue lost from unauthorized digital duplication. One particularly bright idea, which is nonetheless controversial, is the adoption of a voluntary blanket license with the ISPs, which would, in effect, insulate users from legal damages for file-trading. Copyright holders would be compensated through a “music access charge,” which would likely take the shape of a small line-item surcharge on your ISP bill, say $5. The concept is currently being rolled out at universities — those hotbeds of piracy. The proposal has some detractors, because:

1. It sets a permanent market price for digital music (whatever the surcharge is)
2. It requires a neutral agency to collect and distribute royalties
3. It throws out of whack international copyright agreements
4. Labels lose branding opportunities
5. Others in the content industry may come calling: MPAA, photographers, publishers, etc. Soon that $5 surcharge could be $50.

I think it’s a good temporary solution. There can also simultaneously be “premium” services that add value to P2P, while creating additional revenue. Meanwhile, technology will move apace, and white space devices and other spectrum reform opportunities will lead to ubiquitous broadband and wi-fi. At this point, device interoperability and easy, stable connections will make subscription services appealing to the masses. If you can get ALL music beamed to you at home, in the car, on your handset and everywhere else, why do you need clutter your hard drive with files? Economics of scale would make subscription very cheap — and we can add value with artist pages, holograms, whatever. With the arrival of the celestial jukebox, piracy becomes irrelevant.

Dan: Yeah, who are those jokers kidding. They could give a fuck about artists.

All of this comes down to giving the consumer what they want and predicting what they don’t yet know they want. Use technology to liberate content — more wine, less bottles. When do I get to be in charge?

It’s always amusing with the labels beat their chests and say, “We’re doing this all for the artists, ’cause we’re all about the artists, God knows we love ‘em to death and want to make sure the artists get their fair share…” Give me a break. Can’t wait for the whole busload of fucktards to go barreling over the cliff. Now, there’s a video I want to see on YouTube…

The biggest problem is that record companies are pining for the glory days of the mid-90s, when they could produce CDs for pennies apiece feature music by talentless hacks that they invested little to no time/money in. They just can’t accept the fact that those days are long gone & that the technologies they developed out of greed have turned against them and resulted in their own undoing.

Hubris at its finest….

Unless Uncle Sam digs deep to bail out obsolete giants, that is.