Copyrights, Royalties & Sharing by Louis Evan Palmer
A way around increasingly rigid copyright protection mechanisms or overdone policing efforts is to expand on the idea that Canada has used regarding taxing blank cassettes and tapes. We can keep tabs on how often a song or album is downloaded and pay out to the artists based on that up to a maximum. This type of royalty acknowledges the new internet medium, its mobile adjuncts and the decentralization and commons philosophy while still rewarding the artists who create the works.
If successful, a regime of this type would lead to reciprocal agreements in other jurisdictions up to the stipulated maximum. Thus, as an example, a specific fee on internet connectivity would pay into a fund that would be used to pay out royalities to artists per time period per jurisdiction.
This compensation scheme may actually pay out more to artists than the traditional method. The other tremendous advantage of it is that it would encourage the growth of small groups and unknown artists while it reduces the already predatory monopolisitic power of the large record companies. We could see a spectacular burst of creativity and new artists with the income spread out more to newer, lesser known artists.
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Copyright 2007 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.
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