"In a bid to persuade the music industry that P2P networks can encourage legal file-sharing, P2P companies today claimed that more people have bought tracks from Heart's new album, 'Jupiter's Darling', via the likes of Grokster, Morpheus and Kazaa than through Apple's iTunes Music Store."

What I personally would really love would be if you could pay an "internet tax" and then download, via P2P or whatever, anything you liked. I would even be willing to pay what is the eqivalent of one album in $$$ every month for this, on top of my broadband fees. Perhaps more. P2P is the technology that can bring the consumer media delivery that is worth paying for.

I totally agree with this, but I think it is a pipe dream. Until the artists take control of their own catalogs, the media companies will fiercly fight any distribution method they do not controll.

There is already a similiar 'tax' on minidisc blanks that goes to reimburse artists that are presumably being ripped off by minidisc users. Now, since p2p is definitely the chief draw to broadband, why not tack on a similiar userfee to compensate copyright holders?

Hell no, I'm already paying a lot for DSL. I'm not going to deny that I ocasionally download an mp3 or two from p2p networks, but that's not something that justifies having to pay a "broadband/piracy" tax, even if I don't download any music for weeks or months.

I'm not going to deny I download tons of music for free and never consider buying the albums.

Of course no one wants to pay for it.

And for the tax idea... I think artists should get their compensation, but servics charging 50 to 99 cents / song says it all.

A tax the RIAA would deem satisfactory would likely surpass your monthly broadband bill 5 times.