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Don't you think that the NSA, FBI, Jack Bauer CTU whatever already know pretty well what everyone is doing online the way things are today? And don't you think that the governments will keep on knowing no matter what you do?
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I think that they
can know quite a lot -- if they work at it. After all, computers and computerized records raise truly terrifying privacy issues. Just attend any of the lectures at my university's (Carnegie Mellon University, that is) "Computers, Organization, and Society" track and you'll learn far more than you ever wanted to know about such issues.
But that's no reason to make it
easy for them! And the system you describe would have put Thomas Paine (and the rest of the US founding fathers) right out of business. Not to mention the old Soviet 'Samizdat' writers. Not even a court order needed. Just look at the cash flow using data that the Gov't
has to have in order to make the payments!
As for "will keep on knowing no matter what you do" -- that's sort of the point. I
want the Googles of the world to be able to tell the Gov't to take a hike. They can do that because the Gov't
doesn't already have the data. And they can insist on a court order, with judges who can (usually) be reasoned with.
A system that just hands over the necessary data to the Gov't -- just to make it more convenient to pay some artists, no less! -- simply invites misuse. We may not be able to stop such misuse in the worst cases, but we can surely try make it more difficult and less likely.
Xenophon