Such an approach would allow transmissions of recorded music to be made available from countless licensed sources, any time, anywhere, to anyone with Internet access. Like the performance right, but unlike the distribution right, an online transmission right cannot be subverted by a single unauthorized user. Whether or not particular transmissions were licensed would have no effect on the market for the online transmission right over all. Moreover, an online transmission right would not depend on the efficacy of exclusionary technology. This would free the industry from pursuit of unbreakable encryption, allowing it to focus on perfecting watermarking and tracking technologies that will enable payment of Internet royalties to those whose works were actually transmitted online.
Important questions remain.
However these matters are resolved, a licensing model like the one suggested here could bring rationality and predictability to the online music marketplace and allow the industry to assert control irrespective of how technology develops.