May be I have not yet read carefully enough: but up to now I have not yet seen a proposal like this to make file sharing legal: When it became popular using tape recorders about 50 years ago, they found a solution for this very question: on every tape recorder there was a small fee to be paid by the buyer. Then he/she was free to record everything for private use, what she/he wanted. Why should it not be possible to put such a fee on every PC, which offers the the possibility of downloading? The fee has to be shared among the media producers/copyright holders. Then the user is free to download, what ever may be for private use. Is there a problem for this way?
Yes. The problem is that the industry will want to control the fee - and the fee will never be high enough. At present (in Canada) we have for years, paid a levy on every blank CD and tape which goes to compensate the artist (blank CD's cost more than blank DVD's). This isn't good enough for the industry which is busy renting the Politicians to ensure that a new copyright act be put into law - and to hell with the public. The only thing stopping it is at the moment we are in a 'minority' government situation.
