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If I build a house, I get paid by the people who use it.

You get paid once, not every time they walk in the door.

If I put the same effort into, say, a film script, that might take anywhere from 6 weeks to a year to write, why should people get it for free?

On the other hand, why should you still be earning money from a film script after you're dead? It's possible to make the revenue structure for a film script (or any other published work) match that for building a house: see assurance contracts and The Contingency Market. You put a bounty on your work, and once you attract enough pledges, you get paid for licensing the work Freely.

I know several people who live in an area not served by cable or DSL. Almost nobody will stay connected to dial-up for one hour just to download a 30-minute music podcast.

Hello tepples, my name is Jesse. I am the systems administrator for a wireless high speed internet service provider in Oregon who at present count guarantees broadband service to just under 1,100 households and businesses that either cannot or choose not to subscribe to the local DSL (Qwest) or Cable (BendBroadband) duopoly.

While there are people without internet service for any of a laundry list of reasons (expense in their area, computer illiteracy/luddite, etc) that number is decimated on a regular basis. I would wager that at present the number of people in the US lacking internet is smaller than the number of people who never listen to broadcast radio; not least of which because the only channels you get are Clearchoice, religious, and foreign language.

Again, my argument is not that "FM is (entirely) dead (yet)", nor that an insufficient number of people listen to FM, only that we drown in perfectly market worthy alternatives many of which are only complicated to take advantage of thanks to the chilling effects of copyright.

Is the ability to download music standard equipment on recent cars, or is it an expensive aftermarket option? I've seen a lot of car radios with a CD player and a radio and no line in, or a CD player, a radio, and a tape player that ejects all line-in adapters.

If you were an auto-maker, would you chance flirting with business models that run afoul copyright and the current power of big media? I say "eliminate copyright and embrace open innovation" and you come back with "whanh, the corporate overlords and automakers keep PURPOSELY SPITTING OUT my line-in adapters because they want me to cling to the teat of whatever they feed me via FM".

Presently, being a pirate (including listening to music in your car when you've probably only been "licensed" to listen to it on your desktop computer) takes a modicum of effort. Maybe an aftermarket stereo (who cares about music and doesn't get one of those, again?) or maybe a $20 FM tuner when you can't get a line-in to work. I can't believe this country used to thrive fixing their own stage coach wheels, and now you feel uncomfortable controlling what sound comes out of your oem tape deck.

In any event, never fear. Where there is market demand and safety from legal repercussion, there will be droves of businesses seeking to make a dime helping you listen to podcasts in your car. Again, help us clear the path or go back to the teat.

Do you know of any firm that specializes in administering such assurance contracts?

Shout out to the Contingency Market! Keep in mind they are not Your Lawyer, but then again nobody is but Your Lawyer. Contingency Market is a web service that allows individuals to easily maintain, automate, and keep track of contracts and commitments including assurance contracts. The legalese of the contract itself is outside the scope of this service, but this is an important step in the right direction.

It is more challenging to build a critical mass of demand in order to underwrite a financing infrastructure independent of copyright while the antiquated law still looms, stacking the deck in favor of whoever can afford the least scrupulous legal teams. But that is one of my goals: to illustrate life beyond copyright so that those who may benefit from exploring it will let go their death hold over a tradition that presently does them (not to mention everyone else) inestimable harm.

I value my ability to communicate whatever I please with whomever I please. I value my communication and transaction channels being private and tamper-resistant. One of the few excuses that government and big busin

Your 'problem' still exhibits the misguided principle that copyright is the natural law, and that its infringement is theft. It is actually the other way around. Copying is the natural law (speech/communication) and its prohibition is an unethical constraint (suspension of liberty).

Copyright was unethically and even unconstitutionally legislated because it was expeditious: lucrative to press owners, and attractive to states who would gladly have legislation that effectively controlled the press.

If you stop thinking of selling copies (in spite of the fact no-one needs to buy them) for a minute, and focus instead on selling intellectual work, you'll see that the producer's customers are interested in purchasing their work (rather than copies of it). So it's not a question of selling a copy. It's a question of selling the work to those who want to buy it. That means communicating with the buyers and making a deal. Or conversely, that means the buyers need to communicate with the seller and make a deal. It's more a paradigm inversion than a shift.

Or do you really want to tell me that an artist on one side and an audience of a thousand or even a million on the other can stare across a chasm and refuse to do a simple deal: Art for money, money for art?

It's a new or unfamiliar kind of deal certainly, probably inconceivable to many, but it's not an impossible one. The deal everyone's used to is 'a copy for money, money for a copy', but this only worked whilst a) only a few people had copying/printing machines, and b) there was a monopoly that kept the price up.

Now that an artist can communicate with their audience en masse, we can look forward to them doing a deal with their audience, i.e. an exchange of intellectual work for money. Moreover, such artists will realise that the first thing they should do is to emancipate their audience from the completely unhelpful shackles of copyright. That way their audience (and a secondary market) covers the cost of manufacturing copies (books/CDs etc.), distributing them (file-sharing), and promoting the artist.

Unfortunately, those still wedded to the anachronistic monopoly of copyright don't fancy this new way of doing things - it's a revolutionary upheaval of everything they've come to believe in.

If you really must insist on concrete evidence of how these new deals will be enabled well, I'm working on that with the http://contingencymarket.com/. You can check out my site http//digitalproductions.co.uk for further discussion and links to many others exploring non-copyright based business models and revenue mechanisms.

Rather than advertising, the niche I'm focusing on is facilitating bargains between artist and audience, given these two parties seem most interested in an exchange of art for money.

I started thinking along these lines when wondering how on earth one could enable members of the public to sell 3D art in a virtual world if it was completely decentralised (lawless wild-west):
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/article_display.php?category=14

I then proposed an auction mechanism whereby an audience could haggle with an artist and all arrive at an agreeable price (that all successful bidders would pay), sooner or later.
http://www.digitalartauction.com/

I then decided something simpler would be better: http://www.quidmusic.com/

Convinced I was on the right track, but not convinced I was best placed to take quidmusic forward, I decided to create an engine that would support all manner of sites that needed to enable trading between artist and audience, i.e. http://www.contingencymarket.com/ . This, being commission free, would then enable anyone to use it in support of their own site.

I'm now working on an even simpler site than quidmusic: 1p2u.com . It's in very early stages of development, but this will test/debug/demonstrate the contingencymarket. I'll then use it to replace the engine in quidmusic, and finally implement digitalartauction, and others.

An honour based deal tends to require a relationship. Diffused copies involve no such relationship; there isn't anyone from whom any such diffused copies may be purchased, nor in fact any need. Copy diffusion is a consequential benefit of the Internet.

The only person with whom a relationship is necessary is the artist, and that is between them and each member of their audience who would see them produce more.

The Internet enables this relationship, and consequently, with the necessary facility, enables honour based deals.

This is why I'm working on the http://www.contingencymarket.com/, so that it can enable sites like http://www.digitalartauction.com/.

It should soon be possible for a digital artist to sell their work just as it is for any traditional craftsman to do so - without needing the traditional publishers' agreement aka copyright.

Top marks!

You can count yourself as one of the few on this planet who grok this issue.

I'm working on a mechanism to facilitate the process you mention in your 'step 3', of funding the artist for their art, rather than paying the retailer for a mere copy: The Contingency Market.

I also wrote an article a while ago about using this mechanism for games development: The Bedroom Coder's Business Model.