Internet users could collect paychecks rather than lawsuits when they share music through “peer-to-peer” networks like Kazaa, under a proposal outlined by an industry trade group on Thursday.
Rather than losing millions of dollars in potential sales to online song swappers, the recording industry should give them a cut of the revenues when they distribute songs in a protected format, the Distributed Computing Industry Association said.
The scenario follows two others put forth by the trade group in an effort to forge peace between peer-to-peer networks and the major record labels that have hounded them and their users in court.
DCIA chief executive Marty Lafferty said record labels could see sales grow by 10 percent over the next four years if they embraced the new technology, much as movie studios increased their market when they embraced the videocassette recorder in the 1980s.
“Each time there’s a technology breakthrough in entertainment distribution, once it’s harnessed and embraced and an industry finds a way to capitalize on it, the industry does enjoy accelerated growth,” he said.
Under the plan, record labels would encode their songs with copy-protection technology so users would have to pay a small fee, between 80 cents and 40 cents, to listen to them.
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