You are saying exactly what I just said to another reader. Replace distribution with an open standard that has an embedded financial model, then we might have something interesting. Everything else is just a different middle man.

"Open standard" and "embedded financial model" are kind of mutually exclusive.

The whole point of an open standard is that it allows anybody to compete in a particular market, e.g browsers or word processors.

As soon as you have an open standard for distribution, you basically have something like bit torrent where the content producer/rights holder is in the same marketplace as the pirates or anybody else wishing to redistribute the same content under different terms (i.e free).

Only if you assume the financial model depends on that open standard. For example, try to make money by distributing media using an open standard for distribution. Then I agree with you.

But you could have an open distribution model that is compatible with a parallel financial model. For example, fund an art project on kickstarter and then distribute it using an open standard. Or distribute your for free game in an open standard then charge for players to play in your server which has exclusive closed data that they might care for.

Eliminating middlemen means going into the product business (especially in software), but we live in a service economy where there's little support for product businesses compared to middleman service businesses.