When I lived in the UK, I was shocked to discover that everyone who owned a TV had to pay a £135.50/year "television tax" and that this only gave them something like 4 BBC channels and nothing else. If you had some form of cable or satellite, you still had to pay the fee even if you didn't use the BBC channels. I couldn't imagine how this system could be successful -- surely there was mass outrage and a blatant general disregarded for the rules! On the other hand, it made for excellent quality, commercial free programming. I would pay the same to get those channels here in Canada (not the wannabe BBC Canada version), and the natives seemed generally quite content to pay the fee.

Admittedly, we pay a lot of tax in Canada. As someone so astutely pointed out, we are vey good at it. I imagine that the perspective of many commenting from the US goes something like: "Another tax! What's next, a health care tax!? hahaha, those Canadians will never learn." Except taxes aren't always bad things. We tend to feel more comfortable paying taxes to support things like welfare programs and public healthcare even if we never use them because we realize that other people who live here do. Some people never have kids, does that mean they shouldn't have to pay tax to support education? We have already made that decision over and over, and that's why I live here and not in the Excited States of America.

Imagine that, instead of having to purchase your music from iTunes or steal it from IRC, you could go to a central repository where all the music was stored. Click the artist name, see all their albums. Click the album, see all the songs. Click the song and download. And, true to form, our astonishingly large bureaucracy would aggressively regulate this fee, which is what we pay them to do. Regulate things. I like the idea and I think it could work.