I think it is good to retain the distinction between private equity investing in general and venture capital as a special case. I agree with you that the transparency enabled by the Internet makes equity investing easier and it should lead to more of it — but I would not necessarily call all of it venture capital investing.

Here I could quote nearly whole of my blog post on crowd funding — vc investing is a particular way of solving the principal-agent problem that relies on quick results — either quick fail or quick growth. But there are other ways, not all equity investing is venture capital.