(A sample of the eye candy over at DPChallenge)

One of the truely GREAT things allowed by the internet is the idea that the world's talent can be exposed without the pre-requisite of being capitalized on. You don't have to "know people", or even know ANYONE! The visibility of your craft isn't limited by shelf-space. There's almost nothing between you and the eyes/ears of the world. Some great examples of where this happens are sites like DPChallenge. That's where the above image is from. You can check out people's Photoshop talents at Worth1000. You can check the music skills over at GarageBand.

Now if we could just get money in the hands of these artists...
Scott McCloud has the right idea on how this should be done. This idea is as old as 2001 (probably even older), but here we are, it's almost 2006 and still no go. Who will be the one to make this happen? BitPass? Maybe paypal? Google? There's an even older arguement why this won't work. They say "users hate it". Maybe it's that no one has done it right yet.

I know that if Stevie Wonder released his albums on-line for a $2 download, I would be first in queue to download them and Stevie would be pocketing more than twice what he get's from Motown.

I think you'll see micropayments finally become a reality with the introduction of web-based videocasting. Yes, web-based videocasting is out now like the video version of podcasting, but it's very much in its infantile stages. Eventually it will be more like a semi-pro public access TV station and you'll pay for that instead of CableTV. You think?