very interesting discussion everybody, thanks, I've been reminded and made aware of many important points. especially the original wording of the Berne copyright resolution, great to read. ever the pragmatist, I do question though how relevant this debate actually is to a real solution. to put it crassly - the combined production costs and profit margins of every artist on this list probably add up to much less than those of one single hollywood blockbuster. I'm still struggling with it myself conceptually, but the framework has changed quite a bit from around five years ago, when the main issue was mp3 file sharing. but while the music industry itself has undergone huge changes - I'm thinking of how cheap it has become to record broadcast-quality music - the film/tv industry continues to rely on stupendous budgets and huge production teams. in terms of financial risk, this is who stands to suffer the most from copyright infringement. even if we don't give a rats' arse about mainstream film/tv and its corporate frameworks, this is (I boldly claim) the bulk of content being shared on the net these days - why else would people have 40 GB broadband plans! so whatever the next stage in the evolution of copyright and copyright reinforcement is, that's the main issue it'll have to address. hollywood's plethora of lawyers won't have it any other way. in other words, it's not the protection of individual artists' rights that's at stake, but the protection of corporate investment (as much as I hate to say it). this hasn't really changed since the days of "home taping is killing the record industry". in the commercial distribution of art/music, the rights of the artists themselves have never really meant that much, have they? I'm rudely ignoring the indie cottage industries here, I know, and also the importance of the ongoing struggle against corporate domination. but while the internet has been great for enabling artists to pursue direct distribution models, the bulk of all internet file sharing surely involves corporately-owned/distributed content. and for as long as audiences continue to favour palatable canonical pap, that's exactly what copyright regulation will remain focused on. so while we can passionately advocate or reject the various tenets of copyright protectionism, I think we're kidding ourselves to believe our artist perspectives will have much impact on any new laws made. personally I can't see the proposed law changes (amended or not) radically changing download behaviour. if we can already download media files as collections of strands from multiple sources, surely there will be plenty of loopholes to be found around whatever policing system may be introduced. the internet just isn't designed to be monitored. also if we look at the three-decade-long history of software piracy - where pretty much every anti-piracy measure has been cracked - I just don't see how any meaningful protection could be offered to simple media files. as far as I can tell, the policing of copyright on the internet is a huge (and prohibitively costly) uphill struggle and will probably never be resolved in a satisfactory way. which is why I was suggesting another approach a few days ago - an internet traffic tax. thanks bronwyn for pointing out the isle of man scenario, it'll be interesting to see if and how it happens! I've thought on this idea a bit more (which btw. I'm still not sure is really any good), if anyone's interested: the main premise is that users would have to pay the tax as part of their connection fee (e.g. by the GB), and that it removes any incentive for them to cheat the system. although this is an over-simplified model, the difference in mp3/mov file sizes seems to be vaguely indicative of the difference in their associated production costs, so a volume-based tax would (very arguably) be representative of the users' extent of media consumption (very very arguably taking into consideration the traffic of streaming and video conferencing, and the crossover with online sales). the other main difficulty would be how the resulting revenue pie was divvyied up among millions of copyright owners. one approach would be periodic random sampling of net traffic, and for registered copyright owners (or more likely their associated royalty collection agencies) to be allotted payments that reflect analysed trends rather than specific ownership. another approach would be for all files protected by copyright to have trackable ownership tags. such a tagging/monitoring system would of course open the privacy can of worms, and it would also be susceptible to hacking. however if my imagined tax was paid by volume (whatever way this might work) and regardless of actual content, there would be no real incentive for users to cheat. (tax regulation - to stem free market capitalist greed - isn't this what we want? back to the regulated market utopia?) another consideration would be the amount of money involved for users. this wouldn't be a tax to generate the equivalent revenue of sale prices but simply to cover the licensing cost, and even that at a much lower level than now. that may be hard to accept for corporate content owners, but they are currently headed for a web disaster anyway. this idea would actually guarantee copyright owners a base level of reimbursement for their production costs. one final point to consider (in what has become an increasingly tangential rant, sorry!) is the role of the ISPs. as illegal as much video downloading is, it does represent immense profits to ISPs. because of this, I'd imagine for the ISPs to chip in on this tax, and also to provide the monitoring/tracking/sampling services needed to make it happen. I don't think they could very well refuse, seeing it's them who are (in effect) facilitating all of the piracy at the moment, and who would stand to benefit greatly from increased net traffic. any comments/criticisms appreciated - this is (literally) a feverish rant and I've certainly taken a few convenient conceptual shortcuts. I guess I'd just like to hear some constructive ideas about the future of file sharing (or is it too simplistic to nail the current copyright issues to this?), rather than individual artistic positions on what copyright should or shouldn't be. cheers, jo