Donation model for illegal film downloads

[Fluff]

Does anyone think that a donation model would work for films?

E.g. if you enjoyed a movie but obtained it by alternative means. You could donate directly to the producers / film company.

And skip the distribution costs entirely.

People are encouraged to donate if they liked it. But it is not compulsory.

Same for music, if you downloaded the music and you liked it you should be able to donate directly to the artist, rather than paying for distribution channel you did not use.

Just add a paypal(or equivalent) button to discogs / imdb.

[TransformX]

And there I thought you wanted to donate some movies..

[Admiral]

Considering RIAA's past behavior when it comes to gathering evidence and filing lawsuits, this would just mean inviting trouble.

If they want to reduce distribution costs they should provide downloadable content directly or through something similar to Steam and Azureus Vuze.

[Gurm]

Your idea, whilst attractive on the outside, is approaching some sort of bizarre popularist ideal. Imagine if this really happened and there were no recrimination. Eventually people would only be paid what the general populace thought their work was worth.

Which is... kinda... like... what happens now. Only right now it happens in a nice capitalistic manner.

[Nowhere]

"Nice" for whom? Do we really need middleman showelling crap down people's throats?

[Gurm]

"Nice" for whom? Do we really need middleman showelling crap down people's throats?

Actually, yes we do.

How, without middlemen, would people ever know what movies were coming out? Even in this day and age of the Internet and instant communication, people STILL don't know when movies are releasing until the major ad campaigns hit.

Music? Same thing. Your music would have to be POWERFULLY good to ever reach more than a meagre handful of listeners without the distribution systems in place.

And before you argue to the contrary, I'd say that the employees at YouTube (who are very well paid, thanks) and the corporate fat cats at AT&T (who own the intar-tubes) are "middle men", aren't they? Just a different KIND of middle men.

...

I'm not saying I really feel this way, or that I really think the system isn't broken. I'm just playing devil's advocate. Utopian populist ideals are rarely good. Communism and socialism fail for a very good reason.

[Nowhere]

Well yes, I wasn't arguing that we get rid of middle men altogether, just that we don't need ones that feel the urge to shovel crap onto people.

But it's already working quite good for music, nowadays I find interesting stuff mostly via Last.fm and traditional word-of-mouth method...I hardly remember the last time I was introduced to something via usual "PR methods". (btw, the band I'm listening to right now, George Dorn Screams, is quite good ;P )

OTOH - yes, promotion of movies isn't easily translated to Last.fm model due to the "singular event" characteristic, I'm not sure how it's supposed to work at all other than attaching movies recommendation system to total surveilance one, and we surely don't want that...

And this wouldn't really work anyway/would end up beeing MPAA dream come true - if society somehow allowed to be tracked that way, it would surely loose any influence on decision makers/the ones who control recommendation system. Which is of course how efforts to introduce utopian populist ideals that you mention, communism and socialism, fail - while sounding good on paper, they miss few crucial things aboout pre post-scarcity societies, are easily diverted and end up true to their spirit in name mostly.

But...I suspect you already use recommendations from people you know or perhaps also some database created by enthusiasts more than relying on PR show. So it's not like such ideals are dead (just like socialism, in some form, is working rather good in many places )