Legalize your Music

Every city has an underground market where you can buy pirate CDs and DVDs for a few bucks, usually very soon after their official release. You've got to wonder what marvellous distribution system they've setup to be able to bring the product to this remote place, achieving what the official distributor had not even dreamt of.

Idea: with the abundance of alternative distribution channels for content such as P2P networks or even old fashioned street sellers, we could argue that traditional distribution companies will soon loose their ability to compete. They realize this and this is why they are fighting hard raising the "Intellectual Property" flag as their cause. It's very likely in the long run the distribution of media will settle around the cheap/free alternatives.

Content on the other hand is as precious as ever and regardless of how you have obtained a good movie you always would feel inclined to pay the intellectual author, so I propose we create a registry of people willing to pay the content creators, but not the distributors. Let's assume I have a few episodes of my favourite show, downloaded using some P2P network. Through this registry I would acknowledge that I'm willing to pay the producers of the show, but only after they've come up with a fair price that doesn't include the distribution cost.

With time, and assuming many people join the registry, there would be a good incentive for the producers to issue a particular type of license which could be sent to the people registered so they can demostrate that their files are legal.