I agree with the other poster that said you underestimate the difficulty of distribution. Consider cases that may be closer to home: Which do people use more,

I agree with the other poster that said you underestimate the difficulty of distribution. Consider cases that may be closer to home: Which do people use more, Windows or Linux? Which one can you get from your computer supplier (let's not bother with the 0.0000001% of computers that come with Linux)? How do most people on Linux get software, install from source or a package manager? Which one involves a middleman? Same answer to both, the package manager. How do most people get food? A grocery store or farmers? Middlemen are a very necessary part of society. It is simply impractical for everyone who wants food to have to personally get it from a farmer. No farmer has enough time to sit there and sell food to everyone who needs to eat, and no one has time to get all their food directly from the people that produce it. Similarly, you CAN go searching MySpace and SoundClick and CDBaby, hoping for a gem (and I have found some), or you can turn on the radio, hear something you like, drive to Target and buy the CD. In order to find a complete library worth of music direct from the artists, you have to spend all your time searching for music. The artists would also have to spend all their time promoting and wouldn't have any time to actually make music. Your CMS is just another middleman. Even if you steal music, you're using a middleman, the P2P network. People who steal music don't even make the effort to get it from the artist directly. YouTube is just another middleman in your video example. Here's a question. How did you find that YouTube video? The very fact that you're on Hacker News means you aren't opposed to middlemen. Hacker News is a middleman! There is very little original content here. It's all links. It's a one-stop shop for stuff you COULD find on your own, you just don't have the time to. Where's the direct hacker-to-news relationship? Now, Hacker News doesn't charge for their service, but if they did, breaking in to get the current article list without paying would be no different than music theft. And yes, it is theft. I don't care what the legal term is.