The Isle of Man's e-commerce minister, Tim Craine, has revealed further details about the Island governments plans to offer a blanket legal file sharing (P2P) service (here) to residents. This would be charged at a set fee of 1Euro extra per year, though an opt-out would be offered for those that don't download music:


In principal such a scheme is interesting but in practice 1Euro per year is not a lot compared to the £1bn of legal music revenue per annum. It would also be very difficult to manage unless a specific service was offered to handle downloads. We can't imagine iTunes being very happy about that, not to mention all of the other online stores.

Naturally the music industry has already given the idea a hostile reception, though that doesn't mean to say a trial won't be run. Likewise some parts of the plan could have merit but we will require further details before being able to draw any real conclusions.