I wouldn't say that P2P never became mainstream. BitTorrent is still huge and a great way to share media with each other. The reason it's not mainstream is because without centralisation, you can't enforce copyright and DRM. If sharing movies with friends was legal, P2P platforms would sprout like mushrooms after rain.
I personally think, perhaps foolishly, that if we decriminalise nonprofit filesharing and at the same time make supporting creators easy and not tied to buying the media, we would have a better system in place. I would love to see some of the smaller creators on Patreon experiment with giving every Patron a transferrable license to reproduce their work, as long as attribution is given.
I base my assumption on the fact that piracy has been a constant presence for the last 20 years and the entertainment industry doesn't seem to have suffered one bit. In fact every time they try to kill piracy all they end up getting is negative PR.
I personally think, perhaps foolishly, that if we decriminalise nonprofit filesharing and at the same time make supporting creators easy and not tied to buying the media, we would have a better system in place. I would love to see some of the smaller creators on Patreon experiment with giving every Patron a transferrable license to reproduce their work, as long as attribution is given.
I base my assumption on the fact that piracy has been a constant presence for the last 20 years and the entertainment industry doesn't seem to have suffered one bit. In fact every time they try to kill piracy all they end up getting is negative PR.