"I wonder what happened if Piratebay offered a Pay button on top."
Can't happen, won't happen. Not only because finding who to pay to would be a hassle, but regulating that would be a disaster. Who get's to enter PayPal email? The uploader? Then I would put in mine.
But more importantly, even if money was sent to verified addresses, it would still likely be illegal. Studios couldn't take the money without accounting for that, and accounting would mean endorsement, and they surely don't want to endorse it in any way at all.
It's a thought experiment, I think you don't have to be so literal. The point is that people will probably pay for their content if they are given the freedom to actually use it as they see fit.
Having such a button on TPB is a thought experiment, but the process is exactly why I'm shifting away from physical media and buying high quality no-DRM music from iTunes. This is also why I won't buy movies or shows from iTunes, ever, until they drop DRM. I just wish the whole content was aggregated in one worldwide store instead of having segregated regional stores.
If I buy something today, I want to have 1. the best possible quality, 2. be able to read it now on whatever device I want (which means transcoding it to any size I want as I don't want to fill my phone with a 20GB 1080p movie), and 3. to be able to pick it up ten, twenty years down the road and read it as is. Anything else is equivalent to trying to sell me the same content twice and absolutely unacceptable.
Can't happen, won't happen. Not only because finding who to pay to would be a hassle, but regulating that would be a disaster. Who get's to enter PayPal email? The uploader? Then I would put in mine.
But more importantly, even if money was sent to verified addresses, it would still likely be illegal. Studios couldn't take the money without accounting for that, and accounting would mean endorsement, and they surely don't want to endorse it in any way at all.