What can be demonstrated, empirically, is that money can be made without imposing draconian controls.
Lots of people sell videos online without the middle man. Most see no sales.
This is demonstrably false. In fact, every artist who's ever done an online release of their content without DRM has seen sales in proportion to their general popularity. We've seen this with Radiohead, with NIN, and with many other lesser artists.
In every case, the profits were roughly in line with the general popularity of the artist's content.
"Lots of people sell videos online without the middle man. Most see no sales."
And most content distributed through the various middle-man networks likewise is a failure. Most OSS software is a flop. Most commercial software is also a flop. This statement is neither surprising nor relevant.