Swedish Broadband-Fee Proposal

STIM, the Swedish Performing Rights Society, recently proposed a broadband fee to compensate copyright holders for P2P downloading.

I don’t believe in this idea. Collecting user fees and distributing them could lead to arbitrary distribution of the money. The Swedish library fee is an example of this. For each book lent out, a fee is paid. However only 60 percent of the fee goes to the writer and the rest stays in the so called Swedish Author’s Fund which uses the money for stipends, etc. As soon as you have a middleman collecting money, this middleman will take money intended for the copyright holder and use it for other purposes.

Other weakness of the proposal is that if the system is mandatory, people who don’t download would have to pay for other people’s downloading. If the system is voluntary, it’s unclear what incentives anyone would have to pay the fee.

Then of course, there’s the complication with international agreements.

With that said, if an international agreement could be reached, a monthly fee for downloading would still be better than harsher laws. However, I prefer to have neither.