The music industry is losing money to internet piracy. There's no question about that. How they are trying to solve this problem is usually good for a laugh, though.

Their latest idea: charge ISPs a surcharge for piracy. This would be something along the lines of $5 per user, which they would put into a fund to compensate artists.

Even better, they would give more money to artists that had their works downloaded more than others. In effect, hopping on a torrent would make the artist money. The more people pirating the track (who weren't going to buy it anyway) means more money for the artist.

Other issues could come up in who actually gets charged this extra money. The ISPs would probably pass it down to their customers, but what if the user isn't doing any illegal downloading?

While this sounds like a better solution than DRM, it just sounds too crazy to ever happen. We can't imagine the government would back the music industry on "taxing" service providers.

Here's a math problem. A train holding this idea is traveling 200mph directly into a brick wall 2750 miles away. How long before this crashes and burns?

Wired: Music Industry Proposes a Piracy Surcharge on ISPs