Wednesday 25 April 2007

Flat fee online television licensing

What if we licensed television online the same way radio stations license their music? Cory Doctorow mentions this now and then for music online, but there's no reason the same model couldn't work for television.

The music model goes like this: sign up every college band in the world for license fees. Allow all college students everywhere to gain access to the entire world's college band music output for any purposes they like, completely DRM-free for a flat fee (say, 50c per student per month). Based on a random sampling of downloads, redistribute the fees as royalties to the bands.

I think the same kind of model can work just as well for television online as for music. Granted, TV is slightly different, but I think it can work.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Movies too.
PPS - The flat fee would be collected and redistributed by internet service providers.

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