• Business Week, Tuesday, December 5, 2006 11 AM

The user-generated content movement (or at least the ethics of it) is making its way to the silver screen. A startup called InDplay, which is backed by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, seeks to be the middle ground between sites like YouTube and the select world of theater distribution.

For the little-guy filmmakers, the traditional methods of licensing films are too expensive, exclusive and inefficient for almost everyone but major players. InDplay aims to solve that problem by being part eBay, part IMDb (the online movie database). It allows anyone who owns rights to video to register as a seller and upload their content to a database where buyers, representing theaters, DVD, TV, cable Internet sites and wireless channels, bid against one another for the right to distribute their film. They bid via email and purchases are made via PayPal or wire transfer. InDplay makes money by taking an 8% commission.

When you think about the licensing mess that is Hollywood, it seems inevitable that the Web, through digital brokers, should help simplify the process of connecting buyers and sellers of film. In other areas of content distribution, startups like Pump Audio, Zattoo and Lulu are jumping into the digital brokerage market to help niche providers of music, video and book content with audiences online.

InDplay estimates there are about 10 million film and TV programs around the world available for license and more than 100,000 professional buyers. The nascent site currently has around 30 buyers and several hundred sellers with more than 300 video properties.

Read the whole story at Business Week »