From Adam Curry comes this post citing an article by Andrew Orloski talking about iPods, touching on podcasting but also calling for collecting buckets of money to distribute to music makers. I've written about this before and here is Orlowski saying similar things:

So here's a modest proposal. Stop trying to prevent file sharing, and start counting it. Lobby to raise some money from somewhere. It could be a tax, it could be a fee on your phone bill, it could be a broadband tax, it could be an hifi or iPod tax. (Germany taxes CD burners) But the figures for these are very low. The United States alone could subsidize its movie and recording industries for two dollars a week per household out of general taxation. That's everything. Permanent income for life - assuming people watch or listen to the stuff - for a rounding error.

If we compensate only a small part of what you say you're losing - say twenty per cent of your revenues, then that's $27 (ŽÂŽ£15.25) a year; 51 (28p) cents a week. For less than a bag of crisps per household per week, the record industry's piracy problem will have disappeared.

Tangentially, I'm completely tired of hearing "It costs X to fill up an iPod." That's a bogus number, predicated on the notion that everything that goes on the iPod will be a 4 minute song for which $0.99 was paid. As we all know, there are plenty of places where you can get legal music for free, programs for free via podcasting, etc. Even if that wasn't the case, this number is irrelevant. I have a CD shelf thing in my living room that holds about 200 jewel cases. I could talk about the fact that it takes $3000 to fill this up. Why does that matter? Does it have to be full?