What is up?
All the sudden it’s like I’m a respected member of the blogging community. First an email from King Kaufman, now one from Shuman Ghosemajumder, a former MIT researcher (student?) who is now promoting an open music model. What’s an open music model? A file sharing scheme with fun and profit for all.
It really makes sense. Blogs are a very good way to get a head of steam for an idea quickly. Email ten or twenty bloggers, they post on it, others link to them, if it’s a good idea you hit a tipping point in a matter of days or even hours.
Shuman’s scheme is simple, really. He recommends that we be allowed to pay five bucks a month to access multiple networks like Kazaa legally. Then you can download and share any songs you wish with the network keeping track of which tracks are downloaded and splitting the money with the artists based on popularity. He also stipulates that there must be no digital rights management (DRM) involved. Services like iTunes have DRM; each file is tagged to only play on machines that are authorized.
It’s really not far from my thoughts on a broadband tax for the same purpose, except that it has the advantage of being voluntary. Personally, I’d gladly pay five, ten, or even twenty dollars a month for unlimited MP3 sharing as long as nearly every song ever is available, like it is now on Kazaa.
Go read about it, he elaborates a lot more on how he chose the price and other factors. Then participate in his survey.
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I know I said I was busy, but…
I was over reading TBOTCOTW and picked up this entry. Very cool idea, and I like the voluntary aspect (the Canadian levy on CDRs and what have you is really irritating, especially if you don’t USE them to burn audio…