That's a nice cutesy view, but it's wrong. Lots of people refuse to use advert supported streaming services because they don't want to stream and they hate adverts. Content owners can't win. Just check reddit sometime, it's depressing how demanding people are.
Nobody is saying that there is one true model and all the others are wrong. That's kind of the point actually -- people turn to piracy for all different reasons. Some because they don't want to pay (so offer ad supported streaming), some because they don't like unskippable ads (so offer pay-to-download services with no ads), some because of availability (so make sure everything is available on both the ad supported streaming and pay-to-download services), etc.
Complaining that customers are demanding is just sour grapes. Customers are always demanding; welcome to capitalism. You either provide what the market wants, or somebody else does.
> Complaining that customers are demanding is just sour grapes. Customers are always demanding; welcome to capitalism. You either provide what the market wants, or somebody else does.
That's the entire damn problem with piracy. Nobody else is providing them with "what the market wants", someone else is TAKING another businesses product and then distributing it themselves.
I mean sure, if people wanted to watch the latest episode of Game of Thrones but couldn't because it wasn't available to them (or they were unhappy with the terms) and someone else then said "I have a series like Game of Thrones and it's free!" THAT would be "somebody else" providing what the market want, but it isn't.
comparing physical and digital products is never 100% accurate, so forgive me for this, but if a Ferrari dealership charges $100,000 for a car and someone steals one and offers it for free, that isn't "someone else providing what the market wants", it isn't capitalism... it's someone stealing.
>I mean sure, if people wanted to watch the latest episode of Game of Thrones but couldn't because it wasn't available to them (or they were unhappy with the terms) and someone else then said "I have a series like Game of Thrones and it's free!" THAT would be "somebody else" providing what the market want, but it isn't.
Here's what I'm saying: If HBO is offering Game of Thrones on HBO.com to anyone willing to pay $10 (or whatever) for it, and The Pirate Bay is offering it for $0, probably some people are still going to go to The Pirate Bay and get it for $0 instead of paying $10 for it. And that sucks; it would be nice if we could wave a magic wand and make it stop without impacting millions of innocent people, but we can't.
However, if you go to HBO.com and there is no reasonable way for you to insert cash and watch video, far more people are going to end up at The Pirate Bay than would if the show was available on the official website. And that is something we can easily do something about. So isn't it better to adopt the solutions that actually reduce the problem than to sit around complaining how unfair it is while unnecessarily losing a bunch of would-be customers?
But what if someone buys a Ferrari for 80,000$ in another country, drives it thru the border and sells it to you for 90,000$?
You know, they (official distributor of Ferrari) consider it piracy too, and they sue that guy for trademark infringement.
Therefore, we are not going to buy your argument.
What if you want some product from USA, and you live on one of countries USA chooses to BULLY for no apparent reason (think Cuba), and you buy the product somewhere and smuggle it home? Is it morally wrong? I will say it isn't.
You're missing the entire point of the Ferrari argument. If you bought a Ferrari and the agreement with your purchase said "You must not resell this car" then morally you would be wrong re-selling it, because you were told not to. If you don't agree with the clause that says you can't resell it then you shouldn't buy it.
The law is not a moral authority, and attempting to presenting it as such
is one of the most disingenuous fallacies in existence.
Something is never wrong because it's against the law. Ideally, something
is against the law because it is wrong, but that's not always the case.
When I buy a physical good, such as a Ferrari, there's nobody who can tell
me what the fuck I can do with it. For all the seller cares I could drive it
repeatedly against the nearest wall, then set it on fire. Same goes for
selling it. I do not see myself obliged to answer to any authority on what
I can do with my property.
The basic law says I can sell a property of mine; and it says it is illegal to sell me things while demanding to not to resell those.
The problem is, copyright law says I have no rights and copyright holders have any rights they want to impose over me. Sorry guys, it's not a good offer.
Content owners may not be able to 'win' against piracy, as there's no way it can be feasibly eradicated, but it's not at all impossible to at least try and lessen the impact of it on the business.
Such ingenuity is incompatible with the entrenched industry's old-school way of thinking, though. They want it their way, how it's always been.
The consumer is moving at a much faster pace, willing to consume content in different and often more convenient ways. They use the internet, which is global, and want to consume content that is still arbitrarily restricted to national boundaries. This is a demand that has yet to be legitimately satisfied, and thus naturally, the consumer becomes demanding.
Unfortunately, the industry is determined to defend itself from a changing world, instead of embracing it. DRM, unskippable piracy warnings, local content restrictions, etc. are all manifestations of such a practice, and all of which actively punish the legitimate customer.
The internet, and everything it has enabled, is still pretty new. In some ways, this resistance to change isn't surprising, and it's easy to be a commentator on the sidelines. It'd be better to reflect on it with the benefit of hindsight.
If they hate adverts they would not use common bittorrent sites because they are ridden with terrible, annoying ads. Pirates are ad supported too!
Streaming is what people actually want half of the time. It's convenient. But the whole talk is baseless as long as streaming services can't make the same offering pirates do.
