[Blue_Nose]

With the talk of fines and regulations and laws concerning digital media and copyrights, I found it interesting that with all the free-market backers around here there was little criticism from that camp.

In short, imposing these digital "rights" on the market is no less an invasive action into the market than any other form of protectionism.

While I'm certainly not always on the side of free market idealism, I feel there's a more suitable solution to this problem than simply labelling everyone criminals and handing out fines. I also have seen through the last few years that attempts to thwart these "crimes" are ineffective, as new means simply arise when one is addressed.

I proposed a solution to this issue that not only addresses the very important issue of artists not being recognized financially, but also utilized the distrubution framework already widely used. Here's the basic idea:

Private torrent sites have existed for some time - for example, the infamous Oink website - and have tracked registered user download and upload rates. As a former member of Oink, I gladly accepted the strict rules and regulations imposed regarding uploading and downloading content as I was guaranateed high quality content that was accurately defined and monitored.

While there were no fees of any sort, it would be simple to introduce a monthly subscription fee to all registered users. These fees would be passed on to those artists who created the content based on the amount of "traffic" their material received. For example, if the downloading of Bonnie Raitt's music constituted 1% of all the downloads in a given month, she would receive 1% of the total revenue of the site.

I specifically mention a subscription rate as opposed to per-download fee because I feel it "fits" well with torrent-based distribution - part of the attraction to standard torrent distribution is the ease with which one can quickly download content, and that advantage is lost if the user is faced with prices displayed throughout the process.

Obviously, this subscription alternative has its disadvantages, so other limits could be put in place as well - users may be given a monthly download cap, and/or given the opportunity to buy "premium" memberships which allow more downloads. Oink strictly enforced an upload/download ratio for each member to ensure all members contributed fairly, which may or may not be required in this model.

Now, why would this method be so effective? Not only does it easily impliment effective distribution technology, but it allows content owners to offer their material to the public with no need for their own storage or management - users themselves store and distribute the content for the content owners.

It also provides content owners with exactly the financial gains they deserve - the more users download their content, the more they earn. An artist without a major company promoting them is given equal opportunity to succeed, which promotes creativity and input to the system, bringing in more users and generating more income.

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As this is getting quite long, I'll stop for now and see if there's any input from others - while THIS IS NOT A GENERAL DISCUSSION OF COPYRIGHT LAWS OR THE ETHICS OF FILE SHARING, I'd appreciate any comments, criticisms, or contributions.