One potential solution to the USF conundrum would be to drop the distinction between Information and Telecommunications services and levy a fee on all services that provide voice communications. This sounds great, but is it possible? At the various conferences I have recently attended, experts have questioned whether the U.S. can regulate telephone services originating from outside its borders and whether it is even possible to identify voice traffic, given that these services may use encryption and other means to obfuscate the content.

This may sound ridiculous at first, but, as was pointed out to me by  Kurt Scherf, Vice President of Research at Parks Associates, the European Union apparently has a blank media fee for CDs and DVDs to compensate artists hurt by illegal downloads. These fees have even extended to the recording equipment as well.

From the article "Radical Idea to Restructure USF Funding" by Ken Pyle

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