How To Split An Atom

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails on music, “For me, I choose the battles I can fight. In my mind, I think if there was an ISP tax of some sort, we can say to the consumer, ‘All music is now available and able to be downloaded and put in your car and put in your iPod and put up your a– if you want, and it’s $5 on your cable bill or ISP bill.’ ”

I really understand where Trent is coming from. There needs to be a simple, better way to compensate artists for the music that they produce. However, a Tax on your ISP seems to be the worst of all possible worlds. Not only does it punish people who don’t steal music, but unless there were major changes in the way that music was distributed it would be almost impossible to keep track of who should be compensated for any particular download.

I think this is one of those cases where simplicity is confused for profundity. It’s a solution that feels like it should work, but when you scratch the surface you see that it would likely add new layers of complexity without really fixing the core problem. What are your thoughts?

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