Well, you have to admit that this is a creative way to combat music piracy. Still, it sucks for those who continue to buy their music legally.

If you were planning to set copyfighters alight with righteous anger it’s hard to imagine a better scheme than proposing a surcharge on the amount of storage in MP3 players. This very thing is being suggested by the Dutch foundation Stichting Thuiskopie, previously an apologist for the levy on blank CDs and DVDs.

Let’s leave aside the essential unfairness of collection societies, which scoop up revenues from all and sundry and redistribute them according to who on their books is most successful. Elton John and Madonna do just fine out of this system. But the folksinger and songwriter David Mallett recently mentioned in passing that the songwriters’ society ASCAP sent him a check for two cents. [Read the rest]