Copyright and Fixing File Sharing

As I'm a writer, I have an interest in strong copyright protection, and understand why the music labels and others dependant on content for income object to passing files around. It would be as though a farmer grew corn and then someone could magically make copies of the corn, complete in every detail, which elminates most of the potential revenue. The market is discounting the value of all the risks the farmer makes and decides that no one should have to pay. Evne if you sell a few ears, that doesn't help when most of the market becomes closed to you and others essentially profit from your work by not having to pay for it.

But why do we have to look at file sharing as the inevitable multiplication of copies? What if there were a system in which people could register copies that they had bought or otherwise legally had and then trade them with others for some period of time. While you swapped, you could enjoy the other person's music or writing or video or what have you, but you'd surrender the copy you originally had. And then, when you were tired of the deal, it could revert.

This obviously isn't a perfect solution, but I think it offers an interesting approach to comehow reducing the draconian approaches taken by so many in the creative industries while protecting legitimate interests. If you and I buy CDs, we can legally swap them, whether temporarily or permanently. No music label can preven that because they are our property. Couldn't there be a way to enforce the same sort of activity over the Internet? Sure, I could have made a tape of teh CD, or a photocopy of the book or what have you. There will be some people who figure out how to abuse the system. But I wonder if many more wouldn't stick with the deal, because they want the freedom to listen to new things and let their friends listen/read/view what they have. The online distributors could possibly act as referees and facilitators for the process, which would only reinforce the vendor-customer relationship and improve their businesses in the long run.