Brazil’s proposal for P2P file-sharing
On Tuesday, the 31st of August, it was closed the open public consultation that Brazil‘s government has put forward for reviewing its copyright law. An English version of the draft copyright bill is available here.
The last 2 days of the public consultation were marked by an avalanche of proposals (totalling 7,863) coming from several stakeholders, including several groups of academics and civil society spread from São Paulo to Rio de Janeiro to Florianópolis.
As part of the proposals, a much debated and controversial issue has been put forward by a group of academics, musicians and cultural producers (in Portuguese): legalizing P2P file-sharing.
Basically, non-commercial file sharing will be authorized – should the proposal be accepted and passed into law. Each broadband user will pay a R$3 (or US$1.71) fee together with her/his monthly Internet Service Provider (ISP) bill. The ISP will collect the fees and distribute it to a collecting society comprised of authors’ associations that will then distribute the collected fees to authors, composers, and so on in the proportion that the works are downloaded.
An English version of the (non-legal part of the) proposal may be found here.
Also check out what is going on in Canada
http://www.musicfilesharing.ca
This is the same approach that DataRevenue.Org has been trying to get support from industry stakeholders for years!
I’m glad to see it finally happening – it is probably the ONLY thing that will work.
Monetize p2p in all forms!