Quote:
Originally Posted by msundman
A tax system that distributes the collected money (non-linearly) according to popularity measured one way or another.)
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Sorry to forget about that nasty solution. I know about the paper published by some professor about it, years ago.
A system like that might work. Just might. But it would not be as fair to authors as paying them directly. Download is not the same as use. And unless you want to put spyware in people’s ebooks and emusic and software, to track usage instead of just downloading, you would be paying the wrong money to the wrong people. Thus, the tax system takes away the consumer’s power. I am not supporting writers whose books I do not read. With the tax system I would, like it or not.
Furthermore, a tax system would have to be levied by the state. How is that better or more liberating or more just than people choosing what they read and paying the authors they choose? To me it seems one more Big Corporation solution, reminding me of what a famous Russian politician once commented: communism is the supreme form of capitalism in which the state is the sole Big Monopolist.