Eliminating the middleman is not the point. Avoiding the negative consequences of having a middleman is the point, and eliminating the middleman is merely a means to that end. If you can be a middleman without (or with fewer of) those negative consequences, then you're working toward the same goal.

You're splitting hairs. Louis CK's special raked in more than a million dollars. The website cost him about 30k to produce. iTunes would have sucked up TEN TIMES that.

I did not say that iTunes was the answer. I said that a startup that offers inexpensive distribution services to entertainers and artists using this low-price, no-DRM model could be the answer.

Not like iTunes, cross platform and open to anyone's business (iTunes won't accept just any content)