According to Ameibo, this service is the only website in the world that pays you cold hard cash when you legally share the movies you buy or rent from them, which should not only satisfy all the copyright nazis who are getting their knickers in a twist about illegal file sharing, but promises to fill the pockets of law abiding users who share their content.

How is this made possible? Surely a start-up that offers to pay you for staying on the right side of the law is too good to be true, right? Well, how this idea plays out is anyone’s guess, as it’s just too early to tell - but the business model boasted by Ameibo goes something like this..

You rent or buy a movie from Ameibo’s catalogue of (presumably licenced) movies, download it using your favourite bit-torrent client in much the same way as you always did, except that you paid for legal content. You then seed the movie to other Ameibo users, and earn money back for doing so, thus completing the cycle and earning you affiliate revenue.

I know what you’re thinking, you business savvy lot - if money circulates within the system like this, then how do the copyright owners make enough money to justify partnering with Ameibo? Since users can earn money back indefinitely, then surely the pot will dry up leaving no incentive for movie providers to… well, provide movies.

Well you know how I said it sounded too good to be true? This could well be the biggest hurdle for Ameibo, as a quick search of the site shows no movies whatsoever - none! So who is going to partner with this unproven service? ..and more to the point, why does the site show that some users are already earning money? Things are starting to look a tad fishy.

Another point I shouldn’t leave out, is that Ameibo’s target userbase is file-sharers, who already use bit-torrent clients and have an interest in movies, first of all - these people are not likely to buy or rent anything they can’t already download illegally, and second, this is going to scare the crap out of movie providers, who already see the file-sharing community as the biggest threat to their industry since.. well, ever.

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