File sharing is only a problem because the release of recorded performances to the public domain has been delayed. Shortening the period of time required for creators to recover fair value for their recorded performances would allow music to be released to public domain sooner, eliminating the problem of piracy – and along with it all of the related costs and alleged need to infringe on the rights of citizens in the name of enforcing copyrights.

The last piece of the puzzle is a mechanism for artists to be fairly compensated for contributing their recorded performances to the public domain. Propagate Ltd (www.propagateltd.com) has developed a unique form of dutch auction designed to solve this last piece of the puzzle. A Propagate auction allows an artist to receive the fair value for a recorded performance as an up-front lump-sum in return for releasing certain of their rights to the public domain.

For a more complete exploration of this issue – including an historical perspective of how we got where we are today, and a way to achieve a workable solution – check out: http://www.kortexplores.com/node/174

Congratulations. You have reinvented “Social Credit” for intangible products.

Owners are getting compensation, and users can do what they do now while avoiding all risk. The downside is that this benefits the big owners who are most likely to sue, but it gets the ball rolling in the right direction, and the costs of implementing this is near 0.

We all tip our waitresses 15% to 25% after our meals. There is no governmental enforcement mechanism that makes us do that. We do it because of social enforcement mechanisms.

Furthermore, I was in and around numerous rock bands in the 80s. You should see some of the things fans are ready, willing and able to do for their entertainers. Fans desperately want to compensate the artists. They just are being denied the opportunity to do so, in an efficient manner, by the corporate greed heads who no longer serve any purpose.

Has there been any financial analysis, I saw the reference to the descreased cost per household but I am looking for a more indepth discovery of the benefits and pitfalls.

As many have pointed out the devil is in the details. IMHO gaming the system will be a huge problem if complete anonymity is used. Some type of registration mechanism will have to be implemented. This will most likely require and incentive for users to register. If consumers are concerned that a single agency can�t be trusted to only use the results as an aggregated sample; then possibly a 3rd party should be created that works with the evaluation engine. A trusted 3rd party registration system could provide a buffer that allows tallying anonymously and provides the added ability to discover fraud. The transmission of information back to the evaluation system must be secure and meet certain security considerations including non-repudiation.

I don�t think you can conscientiously destroy the aggregated results at the end of each month. You must have an audit trail to provide support for prior decisions and to defend against musician/producer protests of each allotment. Another reason the information couldn�t be destroyed some people would contend this system would directly affect the financial viability of a corporation; therefore it would most likely need to conform to portions of Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Even if this system was put into effect, I don�t think it would remove the need DRM or encryption. DRM is going to have to be used to help track copying, file renaming, and derivative works. The registration of a song will most likely have to be based on some form of DRM and a certificate authority.

Thanks for guest staring this week, it has been an incitful discussion thus far.

ErikT

Spare me the platitudes about art and the free exchange of ideas; that’s not really in danger(this blog and the whole internet is proof positive). What this boils down to is money for a very small group of players.

Marketplaces assign value, by definition, as a function of supply and demand. Copyright, by being a monopoly, is subject to alternative pricing models, but still adheres to the laws.

The more downloads you get, the more money you get.

Downloads from where? By whom? Who pays? Who verifies? How much? When does the value change? How does it change? Who decides? What influences the decision maker? Can the consumer appeal changes? Can the consumer stop paying? Who is exempt? (Non profits? Elderly? Corporations?) Does that exemption create a loophole? It’s nice in principle, but when you have multi-billion dollar companies acting in their own interest against the system, simplicity goes out the window.

4. A taxation of any other industry effectively subsidizes artistic works at the expense of another marketplace. A high cost, with questionable benefit.

Broadband is driven by media use. If media production is harmed by broadband, both marketplaces will suffer. This is the world of the RIAA as well as ACSes.

I don’t think broadband being driven by media is a good excuse to intrinsically tie these two together. The value of broadband is not inherent in access to commercial media (eg. wikipedia, Lessig’s blog, etc.), and any such tying would be too strong a relationship, inherently harming both the broadband marketplace by making it more expensive without inherent value increase, and worse, with substantial harm to the incentives of the media industry to adapt to a new and superior internet based market model.

Governments subsidise movies with tax breaks for production, treaties for distribution, and with DMCA/INDUCE they’re throwing in free investigation and enforcement.

1. There is no adequate way to estimate the ?value? of an artistic work.

There isn’t anyway.

2. Wherein then do the incentives lie?

The more downloads you get, the more money you get.

3. […] Though the current marketplace isn?t easy to enter, the internet has created new ways to create and distribute that make the barrier to entry far less than it has previously been.

Since the marketplace would be all-internet, this holds.

4. A taxation of any other industry effectively subsidizes artistic works at the expense of another marketplace. A high cost, with questionable benefit.

Broadband is driven by media use. If media production is harmed by broadband, both marketplaces will suffer. This is the world of the RIAA as well as ACSes.

Nevertheless, I can’t understand your explanation about the first problem, ‘International Scale’. I think that your view in this problem can increase inequality between advanced countries and underdeveloped countries in the sense of economy.

Can you explain about this? Thank you for your reading.

p.s. I’m not good at English. I’m sorry about this.