As one gets older and richer, one uses torrents not to save money but time, and to get a better product. Software is quicker and easier to install. Drm free media is handy and quick, compared to regionlocks and other silliness of legit media.
What I want is a way to legalize everything on my pc, quick and simple. "this computer, and WifePc, and Kidspc, together have 258 songs, 32 movies, and 6 apps that aren't legal. To buy these all for $379, click here. To buy and/or delete certain ones, click here."
I want discounts, too. I want an amnesty discount for being honest, and further discounts for outdated software no one would buy today, and further discounts for bulk purchases. And, I want a large (90% say) discount for media I bought and ripped, and shared only among devices I own.
And of course I want anonymizing protection in case the sellers price is unacceptable or I decide not to buy for any reason.
I imagine this as either an Amazon service, or an open source torrent client feature.
I can think of only three little requirements between this and reality:
1. IP owners are willing to negotiate with known pirates;
2. Most users would trust the product not to rat them out to the law; and
3 that it was possible for code to determine which media you had purchased, as opposed to legally downloaded or ripped content.
This is what i wished sean parker had done with napster.
Any requirements I missed? Fire away!-- white, Nov 17 2011 If you ripped it yourself your local copy is legal. It's distributing it that's illegal. No **AA would grant you a distribution license so you may as well completely ignore that part.
As for the rest, bun.
EDIT: Also the **AA wouldn't go for this, as they get more from payoff money than from commerce.-- Voice, Nov 17 2011 Ignore the "law", make a donation to the musicians benevolent fund, job done.-- pocmloc, Nov 17 2011 An evil registration app would wait a few years until it's really popular, sell out every user by sending all their information and what they've got to the **AA's for a billion dollars, change it's name, and start all over again.-- Voice, Nov 17 2011 Voice, agreed. What do you do with your horrifyingly evil ideas? I post them in hopes of salting the earth, but looking for better approaches.-- white, Nov 17 2011 Much simpler to pay some kind of blanket license fee as radio stations do. You'd probably be limited to one record label per payment though.-- mitxela, Nov 17 2011 mitxela, a blanket license might work if we were only talking about music but actually, I would want this to cover any sort of downloadable content - music, books, software, videos, journal articles, etc.-- white, Apr 05 2012 Voice, good point about local copies. I amended the idea accordingly.-- white, Apr 05 2012 Bun. I'd implement this myself if I had the time. Not sure I want to go to Sony Music and say something like "How about an amnesty fee for people's illegally downloaded music?" Them bastards are evil about these things.
I have to think about the implementation details. It could have a metadata marker in the media files themselves, so that you dont pay twice accidentally. Ot keep some other tally of what you'd already bought. You'd need to be able to transfer it accross computers as well.-- Carmi, Apr 07 2012 random, halfbakery