A News.com readers writes that one solution to the P2P piracy dilemma would be to create two kinds of recordable media--and tax them differently for licensing purposes.
One possible solution to the P2P issue that you described is to create two kinds of recordable media--one that has hard coded, non-erasable fields that would clearly identify it and make it useful for data archival purposes only; and the other would be a fully blank, general purpose recordable media.
The assumption would be that the archival-only media could be/would be used only for archiving; and the general purpose media would be used primarily for recording copyrighted works. The general purpose media could then be taxed a reasonable amount to pay for the "mechanical" statutory license that you referred to in your article. I would guess that the average CD-R could hold 20 songs. A fee of $1 per CD-R would seem reasonable to me.
Granted, it is less than the 8 cents per song; on the other hand, the consumer is adding value in this case by collecting only the combination of works that appeal to them personally and making a personal copy, thus, the consumer is adding value to the finished work.
Rick Greer
Fort Collins, Colo.