[Traditional_Ale]

Nothing will stop illegal downloading, but I thought this might be an interesting alternative:

A dollar a song, or whatever it is. And then it is for life. That is it. You are authorized to have it in whatever digital medium you can get your hands on it.

The governing bodies in place, namely SOCAN in Canada and I think ASCAP in the US already have all songs making money cataloged, as they take their little bit for handling the logistics of distributing the money. Thus they are ideal candidates to have a database in which the owners of the material can register their creative property and consumers can get their downloads cataloged. It registers their ownership of having bought the material from whatever registered outlet they choose. This way if the cops come snooping on their computer it doesn't matter where they got it from, they already paid for it.