In re #4, I'd suggest that your biggest hurdle isn't movie studios (as we often like to suggest here). It's Comcast. It's Time Warner Cable. It's AT&T. These companies exercise an oligopoly on most people's internet connectivity, TV UI and UX, DVR experience, etc. They also set the terms, with the networks and studios, for what you actually get to watch on demand. They pushed their crappy DVR onto the masses, effectively killing off the far more innovative and superior TiVo, because they offered their boxes at point-of-cable-hookup to consumers. They control so many strategic channels in the TV business, on both the B2B and B2C ends, that they're basically running the industry. (They were also the prime movers in the PIPA/SOPA legislation, and they'll be back with another attempt as surely as the sun rises in the East.)
Netflix, Apple, and Amazon look like compelling alternatives to the cable oligopoly. Unfortunately, studios are deathly afraid of handing over monopolistic control of their distribution to a single player like Netflix, so they're fighting with Netflix and trying to push their own alternative onto consumers (Ultraviolet). Meanwhile, they remain relatively oblivious to the real snakes in the grass (Comcast, et al.) -- an obliviousness that's going to get even worse, now that Comcast owns a major player in the production system.
To beat Hollywood isn't to beat the studios. To beat Hollywood is to beat cable. This isn't a war over content; this is a war over distribution. Technology vs. technology. Content producers will go wherever there's distribution to be found, and money to be made.
Here's another tip: I'm African, and I don't understand what you are talking about here. Maybe the next entertainment innovation should force global scale...
It's an interesting analysis but still the problem for any upstart distribution technology is to get content, it's a chicken-and-egg problem. I've worked in the past for content distribution technology company and the main issue was to get content, there were also specific issues to the technology chosen that made it sort-of-dead-end but I didn't see how it could get the content at relevant terms.
The technology to distribute the content is out there already, bittorrent showed the way and it is working at a fairly large scale. Any problem down the road technology-wise can be solved by some (non-trivial) amount of money and creativeness. It's not a technological problem.
The main trick is to get good content on a trivial distribution method. I've been thinking about this but I'm a technology guy and couldn't figure how to get the content.
Netflix, Apple, and Amazon look like compelling alternatives to the cable oligopoly. Unfortunately, studios are deathly afraid of handing over monopolistic control of their distribution to a single player like Netflix, so they're fighting with Netflix and trying to push their own alternative onto consumers (Ultraviolet). Meanwhile, they remain relatively oblivious to the real snakes in the grass (Comcast, et al.) -- an obliviousness that's going to get even worse, now that Comcast owns a major player in the production system.
To beat Hollywood isn't to beat the studios. To beat Hollywood is to beat cable. This isn't a war over content; this is a war over distribution. Technology vs. technology. Content producers will go wherever there's distribution to be found, and money to be made.