Honestly, what's really missing from my life is a way to plug something into a USB port on my mac, plug something into a USB port on my friend's Windows computer, and give him 20 GB of pirated video. I would pay for that.
There seems to be a wee bit of an adverse selection problem with the people who are likely to be customers for this.
PS. Can I ask you to stop using country-specific slang like "a wee bit" on HN?
And it's not really relevant, but since it's probably the part you're getting downvoted for, I figure I should explain: Your objection to "a wee bit" seems really weird. It's not particularly region-specific anymore — my mom from Mississippi uses it — and even if it were, it's not hard to grasp the meaning. I can't think of any good reason to avoid it.
As for the parent above, if an easy USB-USB device that was easy and existed, I'd buy it. It isn't just movies anymore, it is also about giving grandma the HD video of her granddaughter's dance recital as easy and quickly as possible.
Well, I guess using "wee" is more common than I thought, however I would still prefer to stick to standard english whereever possible.
Let me introduce you to hotfile.com, megashare.com, duckload.com, fileserve.com, filesonic.com.
All of these people makes money of pirates by charging for downloads. They can do this because it is convenient and easy for people to download through them.
So yes, you can make money selling to pirates.
I know my way around computers, so I can set up the FTP server on my wife's MacBook Air (for example), but it might be trickier for a "regular" person to do it.
Well, on second thought -- thumb drives are pretty big and pretty cheap nowadays. It'd be tough to sell two USB devices for sharing data when someone can just buy, say, a 32 GB thumb drive for $30.
Seems like a safer bet to go after a demographic that you know typically pays for things.