Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism

Like all organizations fee collectors exist primarily to finance fee collectors. Tracking small fishes is a lot of work and successful copyright holders can afford big lawyers to make sure fee collectors take as little as possible from them. The system has strong built-in incentives to make fee collectors take their cut from small copyright holders.

Therefore, a fairer (and more effective) way of promoting arts would be to force fee collectors to provide a free (as in beer) service to small copyright holders, taking their cut only from big successful ones that can afford that and have the lawyers to keep fee collectors honest. You’d probably also need to make part of the fee collection revenue indexed on the proportion of collection reversed to small copyright holders.

Not going to happen but one can dream.