Fantastic interview with Jim Griffin, one of the leading advocates of blanket licenses for online music, in The Register.
Broadcasting started out as a pirate technology. But as rights holders we'd rather not have bar owners and radio stations ringing us up and asking us for permission each time they wanted to play a song, because it would cost us more to answer than phone than it would gain us in revenue. So the US broadcast industry went to rights holders and created this bundled price with bundled choice, a sort of 'theme park admission fee' for content that allowed that cable operator, or satellite operator, or radio station, or bar to use the content without seeking permission.
