The Globe and Mail reports on one McGill academic's proposal to stop unauthorized music downloads on the internet.
At the Canadian Music Week conference in Toronto Sandy Pearlman proposed setting up a robust search engine of all recorded music such as Google or iTunes and charging 5 cents per song alongside a 1% sales tax on new computers. Doing so would theoretically increase the number of online sales, and reduce illegal downloads.
Pearlman and Apple have been in talks about this possible system -- but the recording industry is against such a system. This would obviously require the recording industry's approval for such a system to exist. Apple, however, has always maintained that the iTunes Music Store has been a vehicle for them to sell more hardware (iPods). As a result, this sort of plan might be very beneficial to Apple.
