Movie owners unite and give Netflix a run for the money!

Basic Concept

The concept is simple. Imagine a website database where you input all the movies titles that you own (and want to trade for other movies). Image also that there are many members and hundreds or even thousands of titles listed.

Now, if someone wants to watch a movie you own, the system lets you know and you send the disc to that person. If you see a movie on the site you want to watch, you request it and the person holding the disc will send it to you.

To keep things fair, the trading would be done using tokens. Send a disc: Earn a token. Request a disc: Spend a token. You could never run a deficit and thus you could not cheat the system and request more movies than you send out (no leeches!).

Fun conclusions:

There is no central place where all discs are held, much like peer-to-peer file sharing.

A disc would only be sent once per "rental", as opposed to the two times an netflix disc goes through the mail.

Using media mail rates, each "rental" would cost $2.13, for the sender! (is blockbuster up to $10 rentals yet?)

Additional Features:

Movies could earn points based on how often they trade hands and thus a true democratic "top list" of movie titles could be generated on the website (ala digg.com).

Encourage fast shipping with extra movies! Members could rate each other based on how fast movies are sent out or received. Higher scoring members could receive extra tokens.

Encourage great writing (content) with extra movies! Established members can write movie reviews. Reviews are rated by peers. Highly rated reviews could earn tokens.

This could easily morph into a commercial venture. Tell me how in the comments!

I hope someone grabs this one and makes it happen! I'll gladly participate as a member or be part of developing the concept further.

Originally posted on RandomEgg.com

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