Ransom auction for digital goods
A "digital good" is anything that has negligible replication costs but high up-front costs.
A creator of digital goods (musician, author, filmmaker, whatever) offers to make their next work "free" for everyone (either gratis or libre, but at the very least free to copy and share), IF a "ransom" auction is met. The creator sets a price $x (higher than the up-front cost of creation), and once the sum of public donations towards the ransom price has met at least $x, the creator "releases" the work to the public.
In this setup "piracy" is a feature, not a bug. The creator encourages people to copy and share the work in the hopes that it will increase the price they can ask in "ransom" for the next thing they create.
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http://www.kickstarter.com/ could be appropriated for this purpose
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Jorge Ortiz commented
This idea doesn't work for content like news where timeliness matters. It probably only works for content which is irreplaceable.