Voluntary Collective Licensing?
There are a number of fundamental assumptions that underlie VCL: (1) Artists & labels deserve to be fairly compensated, (2) File sharing is here to stay, (3) Fans do a better job making music available than the labels, (4) The government should be minimally involved, leaving pricing & other details for market forces to control, (5) Making it easier to “go legal” will allow artists to build on & sample each other’s work, leading to more creative & better music. VCL is an easy approach to explain: The music industry forms a collection agency & file-sharing fans can go “legal” for a modest fee, like $5/month. The money collected gets divided among rights-holders based on the popularity of their music. That money gets divided among rights-holders based on the popularity of the music (as measured by # of downloads). In exchange, music fans can download whatever they like, using whatever software they prefer, with no threat of legal sanction. As more people share, rights-holders make more money, and file-sharing applications will have to compete for users, maximizing technological innovation & improvement. The proposal works financially as well. If the current estimate of file-sharers each paid $5/month, $3 billion in annual revenue is created. This dwarfs the amount of money that the RIAA currently produces through it’s individual lawsuits, and without the added expense of litigation. VCL is definitely more economically efficient than programs like iTunes, where the middle man keeps as much as 35% of the profits from downloading. The proposal has worked before – it’s a variation on what has been used for radio licensing for the past 80 years or so. In fact, to minimize administrative costs the new licensing could even be folded within the currrent radio collection agencies like ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC.