Thread:Comments:Wikipedia, Reddit in 'blackout' against SOPA, PROTECT IP laws/Thoughts on SOPA and PIPA ?/reply (7)

This is really not as crackpot as may seem on first reading. These bills are designed to fight all online content piracy including that of television programs. Here in the UK we have the BBC which is funded by a flat tax (which we call the license fee) on everyone who owns a television. From this fee is funded excellent news coverage, documentries and drama free to watch by anyone with a television or BBC i-player enabled device. We even have a history of partially public broadcast funded film making with our Channel Four via its Film Four brand-which used a mix of revenues from advertising, cinema release and levies on the other commercial broadcasters to produce films, including if memory is correct (I don't have wikipedia to look it up) Slumdog Millionaire.

However the BBC has a lot of tradition, corporate culture and public support behind it so that it can avoid being manipulated into the mouth piece or tool of any one interest group (though some climate change sceptics and right wing zealots may disagree). Without an established tradition behind it I can see such a fund as you suggest being manipulated if not by governments than by special interest groups. With your Bitcoin suggestion I can just imagine a scenario where massed Christian pastors urge their flocks to "vote" for some suitably Christian movies.