[Shum]

Flattr is great and they actually do have something along the lines of tracking down people who aren't part of the system. You can flattr Twitter accounts and they will create a 'pending click' for that account which will only be processed if the person tries to collect the money.

The main problem I can see with your system is the difficulty in finding the appropriate person or organization to pay for every single file that the union downloads.

[corin_]

If it actually took off, the person(s) running it could take the sort of fee that shops/etc would normally take (probably much less) to cover time, and then "Dear Record Label, I have a cheque for $$$$$ broken down for the following artists: do you want it?"

I think the biggest problem would be convincing people to do it - right now you can get it free (or a slight fee from some download services) illegally or paid legally... how many people are going to chose the brand new third option of paid yet still illegal?

edit:

Perhaps a more viable idea would be to do the same thing, but rather than having the aim as trying to win over the likes of the RIAA/etc. just try and win over artists. The Louis CK is now pretty well known, but he had to make that decision before finding out its success. What if anybody who downloaded anything could go through a service that would give money to the artists, without legally admitting to any wrongdoing?

For example, I download a Justin Bieber album, or a Ricky Gervais stand-up DVD, go onto this site and say "here's £5 because I think the DVD/album/whatever is cool", and that money then goes directly to the artist - without me ever having to say that I actually downloaded it illegally, that's just left as an assumed fact.

Of course this becomes harder on the administration side, and much harder when it's something like a big film where you pretty much have to go through the studio or you'd never be able to split money between everyone involved. And, thinking about it, I guess even for individual singers/standups/etc, there's still the issue that not everybody who makes money from a CD without being the artist falls into the moneygrabbing category. Do sound mixers, studio techs, etc etc etc etc not deserve a cut?

Anyway, just babbling on... would love to see someone give this a real shot, but really no idea if it could have even the tiniest chance of success.