Note that the previous description is effectively what Sony and Warner are doing with their music videos. They (copyright holders) are providing their videos for free and get a cut of the advertising revenue. I presume the videos will be linked to their various artist's homepages, to Sony/Warner and to Amazon or iTunes to a let people buy the song, or video.

They then distribute (presumably...) a percentage of that money to their artists.

Not only is it free advertising and hosting for their catalog (a music video is nothing more than an advert for the music), but they get paid when people watch their advertising too. It's a pretty sweet deal.

What I'm talking about is opening up that exact same deal to everyone.

In fact the fact that Sony and Warner gets a cut of advertising their content really makes you wonder why everyone else can't get a cut...

This is reminding me of what MP3.com tried to do with their pay-for-play deal... right before they went bust.

Imagine if YouTube worked the following way:

• Absolutely no restrictions on what you upload.
• Uploading users should indicate if any copyright material is included.
• Users, including Google hired but mostly just "the public", also help identify content.
• Google starts paying a percentage of revenue generated by that video to the various copyright holders.
• Users can add related links to the video (for example, to a copyright holder's website or to Amazon to buy a CD).
• All revenue from unidentified videos is held for X years and if no-one comes forward, Google can keep the cash.
• Uploading users can claim ownership, or claim "public domain", of the material and indicate they're happy for it to be revenue free, allowing Google to keep all revenue from the video.

The less involvement directly by the hoster (ie. YouTube/Google), the more revenue they'll make, and thus, the more revenue the copyright holders would make. All they become are free hosting and advertising providers.

What I'm trying to say is, allow creative content to unrestrictively be used, with payments being provided to the creator via advertising revenue.

Just like radio. Or TV.

I like the idea of relying on users to identify content, as they'll always know more than a single company ever could.

But the money idea will never work. It isn't "fair". It only takes one complaint and the idea falls apart. It only works at all because the quality sucks so bad (compared to a purchased product). It won't be long before the quality improves and the "fairness" drops. Also, the potential for misidentification and thus undeserved payments is huge. What to do?

There is something about the idea that just sounds right, but when I start thinking about it it drifts away.

The idea of copyright was always incentive to create. Imagine if everything you created was available to anyone immediately with the instant potential to make money without any effort on your part at all. If it's good, and popular, or even just reused in a creative way, it'll make money.

What more incentive do you need to create? To be prolific?