Continuing our discussion on P2P legality, As I said EFC has some better idea on generating money from the users itself, by charging a small amount of money from them and let them download as much music as they want.It sounds strange but here’s how they propose this “Collective License” idea would work…

If millions of people across the globe (P2P users ) paid a small fee for the freedom to download absolutely any music available in the network, legally, then that translates to billions of dollars worth of profit for the recording industry.!!Now think if the amount is as low as 5$ will not the ISP like BSNL in India will be ready to pay for its users in order to market the many broadband connection.Selling with an idea “Get Broadband and download as much music you want…legally!!!”.People wont mind paying this amount for the peace of mind.

How would artists and recording companies make money ?

All you have to do is visit BigChampgne.com for the big answer.But the concept is simple.This company is a media research company which monitors outlets,online music stores, streaming audio and video and yes, even p2p network to find what is the popular music across the world.

Such data could be used to distribute the money that could be collected if we used EFF’s strategy of legalizing p2p.Artists and labels whose songs are most downloaded will get a bigger pie of share of the collective license pie.Thus instead of waiting for 50000 copies to be sold out to get the commission he can get from here.

What about CDs?

What about them? Those who still want can do it.This idea is not to stop people making or selling DVD but to give people a power in hand to get music easy and cheap.The idea is to legalize the p2p network for what these labels cribbing about.

Will it Work ?

Of Course, this can also apply to movies, software and basically anything - all it needs is support of the companies associated with p2p.Easy said than done although the idea of collective license has been there for a while but there is little that has been done.

Beside this idea is not new for those who who doubt this idea might work or now.Take an example of radio station which was considered first a business of piracy.They pay a heave fees of every song played under collective license for the freedom to air anything.These agencies then pay the artist according to what is popular.This makes everybody happy, and we get to listen to the latest online radio music.

Inevitable

So is this the way p2p will go? Unless someone comes up with a better solution, it certainly seems a likely possibility.Lets face it:: With so many gray areas in the laws across the world.Here are set of questions that can make you think at the end of this article.

• Is the uploader the criminal?
• Should we use the software creator who wanted to help?
• Try and shutdown every torrent based site?
• Get Better DRM solutions?
• Sue a billion people across the globe ?

With so many questions and few sane answers solution is desperately need and none of them make more sense right now than a collective license.How long will the organizations will take to realize that they can harness billions of dollars instead of suing people? What else we can do but just wait and watch.

For now, we just have to live with our conscience when downloading the latest Metallica concert and hope nobody finds us that we did while we all yell “Power to the people, Long live P2P”

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About The Author of this article: Ashish is one of the co-author of this blog and writes on various interesting softwares, PC tips and more. You can read more of his articles here.

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