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These measures might require new hardware and modifications to TCP/IP protocols to flag copyright and price information, so governments would need also to lean on ICANN and W3C to introduce such facilities. The money ISPs collected this way would be sent to existing copyright collection agencies like MCP-PRS and the Public Lending Right to distribute as in the non-digital world, and ISPs would keep a slice to defray their costs.

I'm not saying any of this would be either easy or cheap, but unless something of the sort is done the future prospect is for far worse things to happen, up to and including total monopolisation of net content by mega-corporations. A workable micropayments system with a real means of collecting them would accelerate the transformation of media industries already under way, allowing musicians to release and profit from their own records, or writers to publish their own works free from middlemen. Asking you to send me 5p to read this column is a non-starter, but if it went straight on your broadband bill I doubt you'd notice...