A period closes, and what is owed is worked out from the rows inside it.

The closing of a period, and the arithmetic over what is inside it.

Frozen first, worked out after. The receipts written while a period was open are frozen as they stand; the licence, rate and allocation versions that governed them are frozen with them; and what is owed to each party follows from those rows and the papers that govern them. It is arithmetic over inputs that can no longer move.

Why it is a link of its own. A receipt is written one at a time, at a machine or at a seat, at the moment a use is cleared to start. What is owed is worked out over many receipts at once, against terms agreed long before any of them were signed. Two acts on two clocks, kept apart deliberately: the count records what happened, settlement what follows from it. Collapsed, an amount would be re-derived every time somebody read a row, and a re-derived amount can quietly change.

The record it leaves. The period, by the moments it opens and closes. The receipts inside it. The versions frozen with it — the licence, the rate and the allocation as each stood. What is owed to each party, on that party's own paper. The payment, as an event of its own. And any adjustment period after.

Music has collecting societies; skilled work has had nothing of the kind.

In that arrangement a use is logged, a period closes, and what is owed reaches the people named in the record. Skilled work has had no equivalent, for a plain reason: a way of working had no address, so a use of it could not be recorded — and with nothing recorded there was nothing to close a period over. The difference the register adds is the address: because a use is counted against a number and an edition, and the row is signed where the work happens and before it starts, the arithmetic at the end of a period has something exact to run over.

This register is not a body of that kind and does not act as one. It administers nobody's repertoire, licenses on nobody's behalf, and does not stand between two parties settling with each other — that limit is on Meter. What is taken from the comparison is only the shape: a use recorded, a period closed, and an amount that reads back to rows rather than to a statement written at the end.

A closed period cannot move, and that is what makes it readable.

What freezes when a period closes

What is frozen	Why it is frozen with the period
The receipts	Every signed row written while the period was open, as it was signed. A row is never edited, and none is added once the period has closed.
The licence version	The licence as it stood when each row was signed — kind, term, field of use, territory and the conditions carried from the Card. A licence that changes later governs later periods, never this one.
The edition	The frozen version of the entry each row ran against, pinned by the licence and sealed.
The rate version	Whatever the governing paper said a count was worth at the time. The paper is the place that says it; this register is not.
The allocation version	How the agreement divides what a count earns between the parties named in it, as it stood. Where a Composite is licensed, each member is recorded by number and edition with its share, and a share is a term of a paper rather than a measurement of anyone.
The withdrawal record	Whether a withdrawal landed while the period was open, and on which day, so the rows it closed and the rows it never touched stay distinguishable.

Freezing is not a state an entry enters and it is not published anywhere: it is a property of a period, read only by the parties entitled to the rows inside it. A closed period can be handed to somebody a year later and worked out again from the same inputs, to the same result, with nobody having to remember what the terms used to say.

Three kinds of party, and each one is named on a paper before the period opens.

The Source. The person, or the body, whose way of working the entry was made from. Their agreement is with Even Steven on every track, and what a count is worth to them is set out there: on Hands the rate sits on the covenant, and on Machine and Records it is set in each licence.

The collector, where there is one. The house that collected the skill set: Even Steven on Hands, Steady Eddie on Machine and on the hands its Trainer brings, Strategic Agent on Records. The chain of roles is on Houses.

The register. Tacit Source, whose brand is Tacit Tessera, issues the number, licenses the edition and keeps the count. It works out what is owed under the agreements it is itself a party to, and under nothing else. It does not pay anyone it has no agreement with.

Those three are not a hierarchy and not roles the register assigns. Each is a party to a paper it signed, and settlement does nothing to those papers: it reads the frozen rows, applies the terms they already state, and produces what each party is owed under its own instrument.

Paying is recorded against the period; it is never written back onto a row.

Paying, recorded once. When what is owed has been worked out, the payment made under each paper is recorded against the period: what was paid, under which instrument, to which party, on which day. The receipts inside are not touched or annotated by it.

Why it is built that way. The value of a receipt is that it says the same thing in a year as it said at the machine, and a paid flag written back into it would be a later hand editing an earlier record. As its own dated event, the payment leaves the two-ended read intact: the licensee reads what it was billed, the Source reads what they were paid, and neither row has been gone back to.

A correction is a later period, never a rewrite of a closed one.

A correction, carried forward. Where something inside a closed period turns out to be wrong — a row counted in the wrong class, a licence version read against the wrong dates, an allocation applied on terms that did not govern it — the correction is its own later period, naming the period it corrects and why, and carrying its own working-out and payment event.

Why a correction is not an edit. The ledger is appended to and never rewritten, so that a count can be read back in order years later. Editing history would destroy the property the count exists to have: that both ends read the same rows, in the same order, and can say so. Made as a later period, a correction leaves the original standing, visibly corrected, with the reason in the record.

What an adjustment period carries. The period corrected, what was wrong with it, what the corrected working-out produces, and the payment or recovery that follows. What it refuses: a silent restatement, a netting-off that hides the original, and any correction a party makes to its own side of a row unseen by the other end.

The mechanism is on this page; the terms are on the paper.

No figure, of any kind. No amount, no rate, no share and no currency appears on this page, and the register publishes nothing about what a period produced — a public trail of periods would publish the pattern of somebody's work to anybody who looked. Where an agreement carries a share, that share is a term of the paper and is recorded where the paper is. The register does not set what a skill is worth: that is agreed between the parties on their own instrument, and this page says only how the arithmetic runs over it.

No standing in the middle. The register keeps the count and the frozen record the arithmetic runs over. It holds no funds and never becomes the counterparty of somebody it has no agreement with: a licensee's paper is with Tacit Source, a Source's with Even Steven, and neither becomes the other.

No reopening. A closed period stays closed. A dispute about what is inside one is resolved between the parties, on the evidence of the rows; the register's part is to produce the record it holds, and what a signed row is worth in a dispute is a question for counsel.

Withdrawal does not undo a count. It stops for new work at once; a job already underway finishes. The count stops with the work. What was already counted is still owed: a closed period is not reopened by a withdrawal, and the rows inside it are worked out and paid as they stand, because the work was done.

What a closing period means at each end of the row, and to counsel.

For the two ends of the row. A period closes and what is owed is worked out from the rows and nothing else: the person whose entry was used reads those rows rather than accept a summary somebody wrote about them, and the OEM's procurement officer reads the same rows from the other end, where the charge is not asserted but derived, every line tracing back to a use its licence covered.

For counsel. Settlement is arithmetic over frozen inputs. Every amount reads back to receipts and to contract rules fixed before the period opened, and the register makes no finding, holds no funds and takes no position between the parties.