This is an interesting article worth a read. One of the people behind The Pirate Bay is trying to apply the same ideas they used regarding sharing content to the income side of distribution:

After resigning as The Pirate Bay’s spokesperson, Peter Sunde was left with some extra time to spend on his side projects. One of these ventures is Flattr, a social micropayment system for people who share content on the Internet, which just launched in Beta. ... The Internet has brought us a tool to share and consume content, but up until now there has been no really easy way for the consuming side to reward content producers. Flattr, a new venture started by The Pirate Bay’s former spokesman Peter Sunde, opts to change this.