MOU is not the sound a cow makes

An article by Nick Mathiason for the Guardian weighs in on the controversial approach being taken by European ISPs (and soon by an internet service provider near you), governments and music rights organizations to coordinate their efforts to enforce copyrights and to discourage music file-sharing. The form the agreement is taking is called a MOU = memorandum of agreement. Some would wonder if a MOU isn't the first step towards price-fixing.
The largest ISPs in Britain (Virgin, BT, Carphone Warehouse, Orange, Tiscali and BSkyB) are sending out threatening letters to customers suspected of high-volume downloads.
The business models that will be offered are almost identical to those being tried in this country plus the only-in-Europe model of charging a license fee to every customer. There is little support for this business model among the industry. The likely product that will be tried is a subscription model like Rhapsody. Rupert Murdoch is in support of the subscription model.
The tenor of the Mathiason article seems a little sunny when talking of the Dark Lord, but perhaps the subscription model will (one day) rule the face of the earth. iTunes continues to own the majority of the fee-for-music market.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/aug/03/musicindustry.downloads