Should ISP Subscribers Pay For P2P?

Several proposals to collect money from ISP subscribers to pay for online music swapping are bubbling to public attention in the United States and Canada.

A trade group representing Canadian songwriters and music publishers argued in front of that country’s Supreme Court on Wednesday that ISPs should pay into a nationwide pool–similar to a tax now imposed on blank tapes and CDs–to compensate copyright holders for widespread music downloading.

On Tuesday in Los Angeles, the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA), a peer-to-peer industry trade group, proposed a related idea that would ultimately give file-swapping networks a service model similar to cable television.

Also read: “Peer-To-Peer Group Floats Scheme to Pay for Music

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