About 75 years ago of composers got together and created several “composer societies” for the purpose of licensing their music’s performance rights. Under the model, for example, radio stations and others would be licensed for a catalog of songs. The licenses were called “blanket” licenses, because it covered many songs (all registered songs in a catalog). The money paid by the radio stations would then, theoretically, be split among the composers based on song usage, A composer whose songs were performed more would get more money. The model was invented before there were computers. The model has been a failure because of corruption. The model was taken over and controlled by non compose owned music publishers, who split the money after it is passed through a dark room where the accounting is done. The record of song performance (sampling in some cases, logs in others) is a fictitious sham and the accounting by publishers is worse. The system degraded to the ridiculous point that the licensee do not get a copy of the catalog, so the licensee get the rights to perform songs that are essentially unnamed.

Regardless of the results, the model was a good idea even though the implementation got corrupted along the way by the mostly corrupt music publishers who hi-jacked the system. The lack of computers and the Internet did not help either. It did not help also that the licensing for recordings (the so called mechanical rights) were excluded from the model. As a result the music publishers created their own mechanical rights licensing organizations, creating the condition where if a composer did not give their rights to a publisher, the music would not got recorded, as the publishers alone controlled the licensing of mechanical rights.

Here I propose a model that could work. Let us call it the “Art License System” or ARTLIS:

1. Make a copyright performance-mechanical rights licensing organization. It could be an adjunct agency of the Copyright Office. It is important that the organization belong to and be controlled ny the people (government) and not be private. The “license” is automatic. By default every individual and organization is automatically licensed for normal use any copyright registered work, be art a song or a book. By normal use I mean to listen, to read, and to copy). Perhaps to make a movie of a copyrighted novel, the novel authors permission may be required to protect the author’s moral rights. The same for recordings of songs. In the event that the authors are unavailable at the registered address, then no licensed from the author would be required and usage can proceed after notifying the Copyright Office that the author was not found.

2. The people would all be licensed to the works licensed by paying for a “blanket” license that covers all the works registered with the government (Copyright Office). The payment is a tax that is included with the normal taxes that the people pay. For now let us call it the “art tax”. The “art tax” should be about the same as people would save by not buying physical copies (CD, DVD, books,,) because they download them from the net or copy).

3. The “art tax” is then split among the authors (music, literature, software), and producers (movies studios, recording companies, large scale software developers, etc.).

4. The “art tax” money would be split according to how frequent the works are (a) downloaded and (b) how frequent the works are performed at the radio, television, clubs, etc. For b, the system could be similar to the way it now is supposed to work (heavy on the record keeping), except that the license fees paid by the venues (radio/clubs/etc) would not go to private publisher controlled performance rights organizations.

A alternative, to simplify record keeping, the “art tax” money can be split among authors and producers simply on downloading data, based on the assumption that the downloading (a form of copying) data is a statistical representation of all usage and that, for example, a heavily downloaded song is also a heavily performed song.

Who are the looser in this system? The publishers that do not produce movies or recordings, because they get nothing of the “art tax”. That is as it should be, since in the new age, described publishers that merely own the so called intellectual property serve no function (as they never have).

Briefly, ARTLIS
a. Is run by the people, for the people.
b. The people are automatically licensed to use, share, download and to copy everything that is permitted by law.
c. Tax money is distributed among authors and producers by a government run ARTLIS

A you can see , the system is in plain sight because it has been un used about 75 years ago. The key: ARTLIS must be run by the people, for the people.

No doubt ARTLIS will require a huge government undertaking in making the law, colllecting data, making changes to the tax system and in modifying the Internet so that all download files have a copyright number and the downloading software in the servers keep counts of the downloaded files and then pass the information to the ARTLIS administrators.

The huge government undertaking are however offset by the even greater benefits, such a fair compensation to authors and producers and the decriminalization of sharing and copying of digital files. The actual fraudulent music licensing and author compensation systems are eliminated.

BTW: This is the first description ever published of ARTLIS, published on P2PNET,at 4:26 am, from San Juan Puerto Rico. From the son of composer Guillermo Venegas Lloveras, whose songs were all stolen by music publishers and whose royalties were never paid by the fraudulent performance licensing and royalty payment systems.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

What is not up to him is this DRM madness. Thats the cartels problem. I won’t buy DRM products. Nor will I buy lossy formats at the same price as the physical cd. If anything lossy formats are nothing but advertisement for the real deal. My stereo doesn’t sound as good with lossy by a long shot. Yes, I hear the difference of what is missing. There’s no ambience in it. You can’t take 90% out of the music and expect it to sound just like the original. It doesn’t. They can keep their DRMed products, I will keep my money. Sounds like a bargain to me.

For me, the price of caviar is “too high,” because I do not value it as much as the price. My solution is not to steal it, but to refrain from purchasing it.

As I said in a different posting on this same story. the solution is in plain sight, and has been in use, sucessfully (with bad intentions and worse results), for about 70 years. All that is needed is a good implementation of the idea, am easy thing to do. Then everyone wins.

If anyone wants a more detailed explanation I will give it.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

Go here for more - http://p2pnet.net/story/7061

Cheers!

Article is here: http://www.forbes.com/home/digitalentertainment/2005/11/22/bittorn-mpaa-pirates-cx_pak_1222bittorent.html

The technology behind the BT proto is quite simplistic, the second someone comes out with a good client that employs ‘Network Coding’ it will put the old BT proto into the grave.

The funny thing is, Bram can’t even wrap his head around network-coding practices. Go check his blog for his comments on it, he doesn’t even understand the significant difference between erasure coding and network coding. And he couldn’t grasp the concept of intermediate random peer re-encoding, which is key to the whole process.

If the MPAA was interested in hiring some real talent, they would have tapped Rodrigez and his associates that are behind some truly pioneering work over at MS.

So it appears this ~$8m was for a big anti-piracy commercial and probably won’t amount to much else.

Don’t ask why, just grab your pitch-fork and get on the band-wagon, we’re going to go hunt some terrarists.

And if anyone questions this, it means they are a terrarist too…

I wonder how “pirated content” can be determined and filtered unless the files are checked against a copyright status database. After all a movie (or music) that had an owner yestarday may be in the public domain tomorrow. Copyrights do expire except in (the republic of) New York State, where a court has decided there is such a thing as never expiring “common law” copyrights.

Also the impossible must be done by the content owners: Find a way a way to prevent the changing or editing of the movie (or music) files so that the movie (or music) is not treated by BitTorrent as a public domain work and allowed to pass through.

I do think that the movies studio and the producers of music do have a problem with digitalization and a way to compensate them for their investments must be found by the people (the government, not the producers). Otherwise new movies and large scale musical production will not be made… once the return on ivestment is too low. The solution to the problem is in plain sight, but no one sees it.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

It seems that anyone who wants to launch a business based on P2P where users are charged for content is never going to satisfy P2Pnet’s ideals.

I think you need to be issuing a statement on what exactly would make you happy (and from the increasingly vitriolic tone of some of your recent articles it would seem that only free content on P2P of anything you want would satisfy that).

It’s time to grow up and make your mind up. Content that is produced at a cost should cost money to the end user.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that the prices charged are too high at the moment and that the controls imposed on legal downloads are too strict and I so I sympathise with many of your views. Yet the time has come for you to put a marker in the sand and state exactly what you want in order for you to be satisfied. When that is done I, and others I suspect, will be able to judge if it is time to abandon your site or to stand shoulder to shoulder with you.

I expect some nasty replies to this but, hey-ho, that’s life.