“This is such stupendously good news that I frankly didn’t believe it. This is what EFF has been calling for for years now, a Voluntary Collective Licensing Scheme will break the file-sharing deadlock and give the majority of Internet users who file-share today the chance to get legit while compensating rightsholders.”

“PlayLouder MSP has deals with many indy labels as well as Sony, and those labels will also get a proportional cut of the money that PlayLouder MSP takes in based on their network monitoring. The ISP says that it is negotiating with other major labels and hopes they’ll come into the fold soon.”

The thing that bothers me about this is the centralization and the dependence on deals with specific labels to get compensation at least nearer to the artist. Is there a mechanism here for truly independent artists to get paid? What about artists signed to a label that doesn’t participate?

But I think the biggest confusion here is going to be the relationship between the end user and the copyright owner. Can we expect the end user to be able to work out that sharing Sony tunes is OK, but sharing EMI tunes is not ok and likely to get you a law suit through the letter box?

Both of thees objections lead me to believe that this is better handled by something like the Performing Rights Society. But we know that that mechanism is a long way from being perfect.

And finally there’s some double think here. The EFF has been quick to debunk Audible Magic. But now it’s going to be the saviour? See http://www.eff.org/share/?f=audible_magic2.html

So I’m cautiously optimistic, but I can’t be as gung ho about this as Cory seems to be.