BackPay

Summary

Filesharing happens. BackPay offers a free service connecting firesharers with ways to pay for the content they receive.

Motivation

The 'property theft' problem we're currently experiencing isn't caused by filesharing. People have always found ways to copy content: compiling mix tapes or photocopying books, for instance. Filesharing just makes it easier to share, and harder to identifiy and compensate the content creator.

But making content distribution easier is a good thing - it reduces cost on the content creator to print books, burn CDs or whatever; making content easier to find also encourages people to try new things. So the only real problem is compensation. This isn't much of a problem either - most filesharers agree that they would pay a fair amount for content, if it was easy to find the mechanism and use it. BackPay aims to facilitate this process.

Concept

BackPay is a website (probably a Google App Engine app) where users can add pages with information about content creators, including links to places where their content can be paid for - PayPal links, iTunes pages, whatever. Links to these pages can then be packaged with downloads and torrents, allowing each new downloader easy access to a mechanism to pay for the content, if they haven't already.

Business Model

I think of this as a public service, so making money isn't a high priority - even App Engine costs money beyond a certain point, though. Primarily Google ads would be the easiest way to make some money - record labels like Magnatune could also be interested in packaging BackPay links in their downloads, and might even help finance the service.

Concerns

Deciding on the correct link to add to a BackPay page could be problematic - record labels, artists personal sites, compilations could all muddy the concept of compensating an artist for their work. Google Groups could be used to discuss the alternatives, and disputes would ultimately be ruled on by a moderator from BackPay.

Scam links are also a risk with user-generated content - each page would have to include a 'is this a scam?' link on it. Users and sites involved in scams could be blacklisted, with recourse to a moderator in case of false positives.

Additions

One potential extension would allow users to track their purchases via the BackPay site - something like a "I own this" button on each item page. The item page could also include information for re-downloading purchased content.