Blog @ Digital Bazaar

A Collaborative Distribution Model for Music

The music industry, via Choruss, is shopping a new music licensing model around to universities in the United States. Like some before it, this one attempts to address the still rampant music piracy occurring via peer-to-peer networks by enforcing a pseudo-mandatory collective licensing agreement on every student attending a participating university. There were a number of very interesting parts to the proposal that we would like to work on improving with Choruss and any partner universities. There were also a few propositions that we think are harmful to the industry, artists and fans as a whole.

It should be no surprise that we think that any sort of mandatory collective licensing is a very bad idea, as is the “covenant not to sue” approach that Choruss is currently pursuing. Voluntary collective licensing, as proposed by organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is not a good alternative either.

The basic approach proposed via collective licensing is to allow the general public unfettered access to all types of intellectual property, such music, movies and books. One would be allowed to download copyrighted works via BitTorrent, Limewire, and YouTube without worrying about the copyright-owner filing a lawsuit. ISPs would include a collective licensing charge on your monthly Internet connectivity bill, say $10 for movies, $10 for books, and $10 for music, that would be distributed to copyright owners based on what one downloads.

While this may seem like a good idea at first, the approach is fatally flawed…