Compulsory licenses involve a capitulation that the record industry is right and that “we” filesharers are wrong, and that they are somehow owed money every time a song is swapped. Due to all the re-education the RIAA is forcing on us right now, it’s irrelevent whether anyone believes the RIAA should receive money for a song swapped. It’s easier to look at cases long-past, where they got compulsory licensing by making everyone (or at least the important people) think they had a legitimate case. In restaurants, where music may be played over the radio, the restaurateur pays a compulsory license to ASCAP (ok, that’s not the RIAA, but whatever) for you to be able to hear music while you’re there. Your ham-on-rye costs more because of that, even though if you ate the sandwhich in your car while listening to the radio, you don’t have to pay ASCAP. Looking back on this now, it seems ridiculous. So too will paying an extra $5-10/month for internet access because the ISP is forking over a cool million to the RIAA to cover any users who are sharing music.

well I won’t argue that I’m not a geek

I wouldn’t say “rearchitect” necessarily, but certainly think about how our framework should benefit the new instead of locking in the old. Does this need rearchitecting or simply looking at the ways in which we already have compulsory licensing for cable companies, etc…. It’s more of a functional goal than a forced rearchitecture.

that’s a geek answer. the system is broken, let’s rearchitect