Feeling a sense of remorse, contrition, guilt, shame, and self-loathing over all that unauthorized peer-to-peer downloading you've been doing? Salve that stinging conscience by giving some cash back to artists!

That's the pitch behind Piracy Payback, a website that collects donations from downloaders and distributes them to rightsholder organizations in Europe and North America (where much of the content originates). I spoke to Drew K, the Australian proprietor of the site, who says that his inspiration for the venture came when he couldn't find a particular TV series available anywhere except in the darker corners of the Internet. In a moment of weakness, he downloaded, but he wanted some way to give back to the creators.

Enter Piracy Payback, which launched in January 2009. The concept is simple: visitors can donate cash ($5 minimum) through Paypal, which is then distributed on a quarterly basis to "beneficiaries." Who are these beneficiaries? They are organizations that control musical copyrights or represent artists and songwriters, but the ones that work with Piracy Payback don't actually want their names revealed, for fear of legitimizing illicit P2P use in the public mind. (We saw something similar with the AllofMP3 site, which always claimed it was collecting some money for artists but that copyright owners were never willing to take it.)

Interest from the public "hasn't been especially high," Drew admits. While 12 percent of all donations are held back to cover site costs, the project is not yet self-sufficient.

There's no mechanism for giving back to individual artists; those who want to do that can just go buy a CD/DVD/T-shirt themselves. And donating to the site doesn't exempt a person from "piracy-related litigation," as the FAQ makes clear. "The PiracyPayback.org service is designed to assist grassroots stakeholders detrimentally affected by digital piracy," it says. "It does not act as direct restitution to any immediately aggrieved party."

When it comes to pirates, Drew has his own taxonomy:

Non-pirates (don't do it)

Innocents (do it, but don't know it's wrong; small group)

Pragmatists (do it sometimes, but only to access material they can't otherwise, to avoid DRM, etc.)

Seekers (seek out material to add to their collection; the largest segment)

Blackbeards (do it with a peg leg on; "they are looking to not only access pirated material but also distribute it For them, piracy is a badge of honor. While possibly paying lip-service to the 'evil media empire,' they are unlikely to settle for any business model that is not free.")

Piracy Payback targets the pragmatists and the seekers while arguing that Blackbeards are parasites who should be the real target of content industry legal campaigns. Everyone else should be coaxed toward the light through a combination of better business practices and more innovative ways of "competing with free."