There’s been a lot of discussion lately about compulsory license schemes for music. I’ve said before that I’m skeptical about their practicality. One reason for my skepticism is a concern about the measurement problem, and especially about the technical details of how measurement would be done.
To split up the revenue pool, compulsory license schemes all measure something – some proxy for consumer demand – and then give each copyright owner a share of the pie determined by the measured value. Most proposals require measuring how often a song is downloaded, or how often it is played.
Most compulsory license advocates tell us what they want to measure, but as far as I know, nobody has gone into any detail about how they would do the measurement. And based on the thinking I have done on the “how” question, there doesn’t seem to be an easy answer.
So here is my challenge to compulsory enthusiasts: tell us, in technical detail, how you propose to do the measurements. You don’t have to give us working code, but do tell us which programs you would write or modify, and what specifically they would look for. Tell us how you would cope with backward compatibility, and the diverse formats in which people download and store music. Tell us how you would deal with non-PC platforms such as Macs, Linux boxes, and iPods, as well as non-traditional network setups such as public WiFi access points.
The devil is in the details; so show us the details of your plan.
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