Here’s a good example of lateral thinking about the music download issue. An industry group in the USA is suggesting cable internet users pay a flat fee per month, as compensation for accessing music download/file sharing web sites. The fee can then be distributed as copyright payments.

“the new Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) calls on the music industry to drop its fierce resistance to all peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications. Instead, the DCIA proposes that the record labels start actively selling their content to all cable modem and other broadband subscribers who use such popular free music file-sharing software as Kazaa.”