Slashdot Mirror
Most File Sharers Would Pay For Legal Downloads
An anonymous reader writes "Two separate studies from Australia and Holland give the lie to corporate entertainment industry claims that file sharers are unprincipled thieves out to rob the honest but harshly treated movie and music studios. Over in Oz, news.com.au reports, 'Most people who illegally download movies, music and TV shows would pay for them if there was a cheap and legal service as convenient as file-sharing tools like BitTorrent.' And from the EU, 'Turnover in the recorded music industry is in decline, but only part of this decline can be attributed to file sharing,' says Legal, Economic and Cultural Aspects of File Sharing, an academic study, which also states, 'Conversely, only a small fraction of the content exchanged through file sharing networks comes at the expense of industry turnover. This renders the overall welfare effects of file sharing robustly positive.'"
This one cost me in karma probably.
We DO pay for legal downloads. What the fuck?
Paying $2/epsiode is not cheap. I would pay $1 for an hour long show (42 minutes in reality) as long as it is commercial free. IF you try to sell me commercials, forget it! 30 minute shows I would pay $.50-$.75, but again, only for a commercial free version.
The purchased copy would also have to be DRM free.
Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. This comment may not be copied in any way including, but not limited to caching.
I am not a downloader. Despite all of the content-producing industry's failings, I believe that I should pay for what other people spend their long hours producing, even if that means, in the end, what the artist gets is minuscule. I didn't invent bad contracts.
But what really ticks me off is when people actually prevent me from willingly parting with my own money due to geography. There was a show on the SciFi channel recently, Defying Gravity. It wasn't exactly the greatest bit of science fiction out there, but I like Ron Livingston, the acting was generally decent, the story was compelling, and on the whole, the show was entertaining. About halfway through the season, ABC cancelled the show. But Canadian and Australian networks continued to show it. You could buy the episodes online via Amazon's video page, but after the ABC cancellation, you could only buy the first half of the show. WTF? I fired up BitTorrent for the first time.
While I'm at it, let me say: region coding for DVDs is a gigantic anti-competitive crock of shit. Fortunately, I have me a region 2 DVD-R, a Linux machine, and Handbrake, so that I can actually pay for and watch good television from another English-speaking country.
I periodically try to buy media from some service that is trying to sell it to me. Invariably, their DRM doesn't run on my platform, and I give up.
Part of my problem has always been DRM. I know it's a lot better now than it used to be, but if I pay for it, I want to get to keep using it forever, not just until a given music store shuts down or something like that. Granted, itunes won't be going anywhere anytime soon, but when all this was starting that was a serious concern.
Even xkcd knows it's true.
...that don't have product placement. As soon as there is a "CONVERSE SHOES VINTAGE 2004" moment, I feel like I have wasted my money.
With all the people forking over $.99 for iTunes and software, I was under the impression that the thesis of this paper has been proven in real life.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Should be titled:
Most File Sharers Hypothetically Say They Would Pay For Legal Downloads
What people say in surveys and what they do when there is actual money in play are two different things. What is "cheap"? And what pay service could possibly be as convenient as BitTorrent? If you have to log in and provide payment information, it's already not as convenient.
Anyway, I wouldn't extrapolate too much from that survey.
That's why people illegally download things that they CAN legally download.
Seriously, how many people are going to say "No, I wouldn't do it legally even if it was cheap enough!"
They asked filesharers whether they would be "nice" if given the chance? Well duh, people tend to paint themselves in better light when presented with such questions.
The Dutch thing is actually a study, with nice numbers.
One that hath name thou can not otter
But they don't how fucking convenient you ninnies
Enjoy da change into poverty and take up a trade fast, its the only fucking thing you cant download
Two anecdotes that are related to this:
I remember back in the 90s before filesharing became popular, I read an article by an expert predicting the demise of the recording industry within the next decade. It was so full of corruption (ie everyone trying to get their 'share', even at the abuse of the artists or the company, much like, say, Bear Sterns) that it was going to implode within a few years. Remember at that time they were still flying high off their boost from the switch to CD format and were spending profligately.
Second anecdote, I had a friend who was working for a major recording studio at the time iTunes first came out. He said iTunes completely saved the industry. People were all terrified because they could see the collapse going on, and were thinking of changing careers (have to when there's nothing else). They didn't know what they were going to do. Then iTunes music store came out and everyone started coming back.
In other words, it is true file sharers are leeches on society who take without giving back, but they aren't the ones who caused the problems in the recording industry. The industry brought it on themselves.
Qxe4
People don't like to have "special" devices to do what can be done without it.
If I buy some stuff and suddently it stops working, I will be pissed and look for something which will work. I dont give a shit to DRM. Behaviourism can explain why piracy is something usual: It is easy and you will not have frustations.
Too bad I can't pay the authors... I want, but the middle men ppl won't let me.
Torrent has costs too: risk of legal action, risk of corrupted files, inability to get the content you want, etc. It's evident that there is some cost that would be palatable as an alternative. The problem is that studios want to price at $5+ and the 'acceptable price' is imo around $1-3.
why?
Because there is no fixed target. For many your numbers may be too expensive, values set by greedy corporate types who eat babies.
That is why I think this survey is bunk. First off, they can feel good answering in the positive. It does not obligate them to give the feel good reply. Second, not only do you set a small dollar value on an episode you ladle it with conditions. Really, your numbers are ridiculous. I can imagine the grief you would feel if someone valued your output at such low numbers. By your logic why should software cost more than a few dollars?
Setting unrealistic requirements then complaining when they are not met does not make the other guy wrong.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Most of the legal downloads are region restricted, they are practically none available in Australia.
The music industry insisted that computers are only for piracy and that no one would ever pay for music online.
iTunes is now the single largest retailer of music.
Now Hollywood and TV studios are being dragged into this, and most are slow to catch on to the fact that if you provide a good service for a good price, people will pay for it.
Why watch a low-quality pirated copy of a movie on a streaming site if I can subscribe to Netflix on the cheap?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I would gladly pay a subscription to download programs for a flat fee, but would I pay $1900US for CS5? Hell. No. Not when I can "liberate" it from Usenet. But TV shows and movies for around the same that it costs to rent a disc from the RedBox? Sure, I'd do that. Especially if it means I don't have to get my fat ass out of the car whilst in line at the McDonald's drive thru-getting fat-burgers fat-nuggets for me and the fat-family.
Loading...
That's why people illegally download things that they CAN legally download.
Like what?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Netflix streaming gets me some of what i want legally...however I still Torrent some other stuff because I don't want to wait. If I could get this week's Lost, Glee, Doctor Who (as its released in the UK), Deadliest Catch, Mythbusters, and a few other things for my 10 bucks a month then I wouldn't need torrenting. However I want the stuff NOW...it aired yesterday I want to watch it today...I Don't want to wait a week, a month a year, or for the DVD release. The pacing of my life work, wife, child...makes the actual time that the show is on inconvenient to watch it. Also I hate commercials, but really I see not having to deal with them as I side benefit, not the mail goal.
easily, it has...
NO DRM
NO service to sign up for or special app/format to run it
NO restrictions on where it can go
AND if you loose it you can get a replacement easily because you already bought the 'rights' to listen to the white album 20 times already, why do you need to do it again for your iPhone?
It's not stealing, it's having a tool to show these D-bags what consumers actually want.
SO basically, no bullshit...like when you buy something at a store...you walk out the door and you can do whatever the hell you want with, the way things should be.
This seems pretty logical to me. Speaking to my own experience, the things the I "pirate" lately have been because of convenience.
I "pirated" Avatar off of Bittorrent because I'd seen it 3 times in the theater already, but it wasn't out on video yet (I then bought it on Blu-Ray the day after it came out).
I "pirated" Survival of the Dead off of Bittorrent because it's not been released on DVD yet in the US.
I "pirated" nearly 200 individual songs off of Bittorrent recently, because I switched to Rythmbox and it couldn't import those songs with DRM'd content from my iTunes library (and though I technically can pay to "upgrade" to DRM-free music- FUCK paying twice just so that I can use my media on another player).
I truly don't mind paying for stuff, and I buy a lot of media. It's a matter of pricing and convenience. Don't DRM it - I don't buy DRM'd movies online because I don't know if I'll be playing it via XBMC (on either my AppleTV or my hacked Xbox), my Linux machine, or any other device that hasn't been dreamed up. They also better price it fairly. The $0.99 price point for a song I don't mind. It works, and I buy most of my music now with that (previously from Amazon because I'm trying to not support Apple, but now from the Ubuntu One store if they have the track). TV show episodes also shouldn't go higher than $0.99 each, and movies in digital download form shouldn't cost more than $4-5 each. That's about what the physical copies fall off to in a few years anyways. Why should I pay MORE for them not having to manufacture, ship, and stock a disc?
The studios are going to have to come to grips with the fact that they've lost a ton of control over a market that they once called every shot in. Consumers have been presented with a way to get what they want for free, but more importantly WHEN and HOW they want it. The latter part is what's important to me. I'm willing to pay if only to make sure that I'm getting a quality standard that a studio can provide as compared to some guy who ripped a copy of a movie with Handbrake and forgot to deinterlace it. When the "pirated" stuff just plain works better though, then they're just being naive if they think people will pay for an inferior product out of some sense of loyalty.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Good point. I'm thinking US.
Since we're naming the prices that we would be comfortable paying, I think I would be happy buying a Lamborghini for not a penny more than $1400. The Pirate Bay wanted to fill this gap with a single monthly fee for access to the shared content but the industry didn't bite. I mean if you are Adobe and sell software such as CS4 receiving a fraction of a users $14/month sounds like a fantastic deal compared to retail prices.
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
Let's go with the big one: music. You can even download, legally, for a small price, DRM free MP3s from iTunes, Amazon... etc...
Search. Click. Files show up on your computer. No login. No credit card authorization. No geographic limitations. Never any DRM.
Pay a REASONABLE price for downloads.
Honestly, I'd love to be able to buy access to my TV shows via RSS feeds instead of pulling them from eztv.it and then torrenting them all. But I cant.
No Hulu is not an option. I want it in 720p on my playback device of choice. not their blessed device or at a horribly crappy resolution plus disabling skipping of commercials.
So I simply have a mythbox to grab what I can locally, and I torrent the stuff I cant get in the country.
Make it so I can pick 25 tv shows for $50.00 per month and I get all the video files at HD to play on my hardware and I'm all for it. not channels... TV SHOWS. Less for shows that pull the 5 episode = a season crap.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I dont have the links, but dont articles mentioning this same thing keep appearing every few months?
Talk is cheap.
Which means, according to *IAA, trillions of dollars of lost revenue.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I was thinking about this issue last night as I was making backup copies for my girlfriend. She loves her Netflix subscription. She mainly uses it for television serieses. We copy everything that shows up and tuck it away into a binder. Before we started dating, she had purchased a number of boxed sets of television programs (Friends, Sex in the City, etc.)
She is obviously inclined to spend some money on television programs. She is willing to pay Netflix to deliver them. She is willing to buy blank media to make her own copies of them. If Netflix is costing her ~$15 a month, and blank DVDs are about 50 cents a piece and she copies about two DVDs per week that works out to about $2.38 cents per disc. That is what the content is worth to her.
I bet that a lot of other people are in the same situation. They want the content, but they aren't going to spend what the production companies want them to spend.
Maybe I'm just too lazy to look too in-depth at the article, but it seems like it's based off survey. Self-reporting is notoriously untrustworthy. Human behavior does not perfectly match up with our own expectations for our behavior. You can't ask people what they will do and expect the answer to be reliable. If you want reliable results, actually make the change, observe the new behavior, and report on that.
I'd love to pay for legal downloads. It'll never happen though. It's great that the iTunes store is offering generic MP3s (although lossless would be nice) ... but for $1/track? Forget it. I can buy it used for $6 and get the case, liner notes, and have it in whatever format I want. Downloadable TV? It had better be high def and MPEG4, and no commercials, and cheaper than they would ever dream of offering it. When I can buy a DVD box set for cheaper than buying a download of each individual episode, you're doing it wrong.
The content industry will simply never offer it in formats or at a price I find acceptable.
That's why people illegally download things that they CAN legally download.
Like what?
As far as I understand, in Netherlands - like in the rest of Europe - HTTP downloads of media files (not software) are actually legal (as they involve no redistribution on your side, and provided that you don't intend to spread the files further - i.e. sole personal use). Therefore, many people here actually download stuff legally already.
Ezekiel 23:20
In the example of music, we already have mulitple, cheap means of buying songs, most of them legal, most of them DRM-free. Amazon MP3 sells songs for 99 cents and most albums for under 10 bucks, with a huge selection of albums even cheaper that that. They regularly hold sales with popular albums in the 5 dollar range. All of it in standard MP3 formats without DRM.
There are several East European sites that sell MP3's for as little as 15 cents apiece.
And still, the torrents flow. Because if you make something available for free, with no consequences... even if legally you have no right to... eventually, people are going to give in to their baser instincts and take it.
We have a generation that think music is free because it's on the Internet, and everyone knows that the Internet is free. In the 60's, the mantra was "if it feels good, do it". In the Internet age, it's "If it can be ripped, take it".
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Most people might, if they had the money left over from so many others competing for their entertainment dollar. I don't mean to sound stupid, but I conversely and robustly positively don't understand what that from the second study means. On the other hand, proactively quantifying the synergy facilitated by that paradigm is a win-win situation for future-proof vertical markets, and I find that quite empowering.
I don't mind paying for content but I want the content to be easy to use. Having a limited lifetime or other impediments would be a deal breaker. NOTE: This is true for all content including computer games. I can afford the content and would like an easy method of getting AND USING the content. Take a look at the irony, bittorrent is not easy to use but it is much easier than actually buying the content because the content is usually defective by design.
I do. Why not? There will always be 'that guy' who gets a boner by accumulated 30 years worth of music for free. There will always be people who will spend time actively seeking out the illicit downloads, even though a legit one of the same thing is $1.50 and they could get it in less time. These people have massive amounts of disposable time.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
The key to making money from paid content is to make it Easy, Cheap, Safe and Reliable.
Easy - The site must be fast, easy to navigate and have a good search function.
Cheap - I don't know exactly how cheap it would have to be, but the general philosophy would be, cheap enough that the buyer does not have to think about the purchase for too long, and the penalty for making a mistake is minimal.
Safe - No viruses or malware.
Reliable - The site is always up, downloads always complete successfully.
And...of course NO DRM, NO COMMERCIALS.
Do all of these things, and I believe that most people would pay instead of pirate.
Is downloading banned stuff , games like manhunt2 outside USA piracy in its criminal form, as it did not result in a lost sale for the publisher, just that the publisher did not want to sell it to me
I want a service that provides me with live streaming access to all media ever created. I would be willing to pay a monthly subscription fee for this service, probably up to the $100 USD/mo range. This is *almost* what we have with the vibrant torrent community already.
How can you make a claim that BitTorrent is more convenient than a legal service?
It's all the free malware you get along with your BitTorrent downloads that swings it.
3.. 2.. 1.. Cue a legion of angry flame warriors complaining about DRM riddled legal download services.
because if they do not, its not legal. So its an always true statement ...
Yes, and iTunes sells literally millions of tracks every day. Sure, piracy hasn't been wiped out, but low price music without ads or DRM seems to sell pretty successfully, even though the option not to pay is just a couple of clicks away. Spotify, which uses a free but ad supported streaming model for music, is also extremely popular here in the UK.
I'm unaware of a comparable service for video, though. Hulu and its ilk seem like a great idea - moving the standard ad-supported broadcast model onto the web seems very sensible and, as I mentioned, it seems to be working for Spotify. Unfortunately, though, they're still encumbered by archaic distribution agreements which mean they're only available in certain geographic regions.
Gave up on iTunes. About 1 in 5 items I purchased were either incorrectly labelled so I didn't get what I wanted, or very poor quality but with a high quality sample.
The pricing was fine but getting these things fixed via their customer service is pretty painful, particularly when it was a very similar item (show 5 from season 2 instead of show 2 from season 5).
Sample set was well over 100 items. I haven't tried the alternatives yet, but iTunes is out.
Rod Taylor
Yeah, probably I would. How much? Another good question. I might pay $30/mo but that depends on the terms. If I stop paying would I lose rights to everything I downloaded up until that point? If no, then yeah... if yes, then hell no.
Given that I pay $11/month for a usenet account to pirate whatever I want, I'd definitely be willing to pay some amount, but it sure as well wouldn't be per song. I'd probably pay $15/mo to be able to download whatever I wanted whenever, but that's never going to happen. Plus when I pay to pirate it, I get insanely fast download speeds, good availability, and absolutely no DRM on anything, it's great!
So let's go with a counter-example from recent experience...
"Only You" (re-recorded version) by The Flying Pickets, at Amazon UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Only-You-Re-recorded-Version/dp/B001LBT6S4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1273254270&sr=1-2
This is geographically right next to where I live.. save for the north sea.
But I can't buy it.
There's no Dutch Amazon, so that's out.
The Dutch 7digital doesn't have it (fwiw, neither does the American Amazon).
Granted - I haven't checked iTunes yet.. too bad I have to go through a specific piece of software to even find out.
But clearly it's not as simple as "music. You can even download, legally, for a small price, DRM free MP3s from iTunes, Amazon", as that only applies to those items actually for sale.
It -is- that simple with illegal downloads, on the other hand. No geographic restrictions, no having to set up any account, nothing.
I purchase my music, movies, etc wherever I can or typically just do without. But every once in a while, if a company decides to be boneheaded to the core, I have no qualms with downloading (heck, downloading (music/movies) is legal in NL anyway, so I shouldn't have any qualms regardless).
Let's go with the big one: music. You can even download, legally, for a small price, DRM free MP3s from iTunes, Amazon... etc...
Okay, I get you now. I see it from a different perspective, though. Music trading has been super easy for over 10 years. iTunes has been enormously successful and Amazon isn't doing too bad itself. iTunes even dumped its DRM and is still doing fine. I don't think the number of people 'illegally' downloading MP3s when they could get them otherwise is anything remarkable. For all we know, they're just downloading songs because it's easier to do that than to rip all their CDs sitting in the back of their closet.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I don't see your point. Those services are hugely popular and lucrative.
Before they were shut down had reasonable prices and an extensive library; they charged by bit-rate (hence bandwidth) at very reasonable prices.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
> Let's go with the big one: music. You can even download, legally, for a small price, DRM free MP3s from iTunes, Amazon... etc...
That's fine so long as the download services carry what you're interested in.
Much like Netflix, the idea that they have whatever you want or even anything that's available on physical media is something you can't assume.
There are a number of things that iTunes doesn't carry.
Some things aren't even available at all. Perhaps they never have been or didn't sell well enough when they were and are now discontinued.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
At least partly because this.
When I say “convenient”, I mean convenient.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Better quality FLAC files are easier to find from non-commercial sources.
Its cheap enough, its selection is big enough and the keep 10 incentive/deal makes it very affordable. Not only that but the software is pretty cool, integrates with zune hardware, xbox 360 and remote windows media players easily.
I could say the same for netlix.. i quit using torrent for tv since instant watch has plenty of things for me to watch and quite franky i enjoy waiting a few months until all episodes are available on disk or on demand instead of waiting a week between each episode and planning my life around tv.
'Most people who illegally download movies, music and TV shows would pay for them if there was a cheap and legal service as convenient as file-sharing tools like BitTorrent.'
If only someone would create an online service which allowed you to buy music! What kind of twisted mockery of a universe do we live in that has kept this from happening?
Why must the universe mock us so?! WHY?!
(For reference, it is raining behind me, and I am wet. The two are not related.)
Exactly. And that is where I get my music; I haven't illegally downloaded any music in ages, ever since there has been a viable legal alternative.
I still download movies illegally (though in the Netherlands downloading isn't strictly illegal if you don't upload at the same time). Why? Not because I am unwilling to spend my money, but because the pirates offer a better product. I fully agree with our MPs who state that downloading of copyrighted material will not be prosecuted until there is a viable legal alternative. Viable... This means a good selection, a good price, a variety of formats, and no DRM so that I can actually download to own and play movies on any of my devices.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
What: Printing press
When: 1653..about
Who: Stationaries guild
I read an article by an expert predicting the demise of the book industry within the next decade. -
What: Player pianos
When: 1906
Who: Composers
I read an article by an expert predicting the demise of the music industry within the next decade. -
What: VCRs
When: 1970s
Who: TV industry
I read an article by an expert predicting the demise of the TV industry within the next decade. -
What: Software
When: Mid 70s, 80's, 90's, and the Naughties.
Who: Software industry
I read an article by an expert predicting the demise of the SOftware industry within the next decade. -
What: Cassettes
When: Late 70s
Who: Music Industry
I read an article by an expert predicting the demise of the Music industry within the next decade. -
They would be wise to learn from history and adopt instead of wasting money irritating consumers.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Are they region-restricted though?
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Part of the fault of this whole "downloading" mess rests on the "industry" shoulders, be it the music, movie or TV. Specifically the whole "region" concept.
Why, in this day and age, with globalization, internets and the like, do I have to wait MONTHS to catchup a TV series on my country (Portugal), after it broadcasts on the US? Why don't they just make it available straight away on iTunes, for me to *buy it*? Oh right. Because as of right now, I can't buy series or movies on iTunes Portugal, only music... Can someone explain me why?
Or why do I have to wait 6 (sometimes even more) months to get a movie on DVD, after it came out on the US? Granted, I can understand some delay related to localization costs (in the Portuguese case, only covers and subtitles, as we almost never dub movies, as the Spanish do). But even so, if I want to buy the whole English version of a movie, why can't I do it? Well, I can do it, I can order it from Amazon.com.... if I have a region 1 DVD player, of course.
In both these situations, I have two options: sit and wait months for the "region aproved" versions of the series or movies (if they ever get picked up by the local distributors, of course), or just fire up utorrent and have a Lost episode hours after it aired in the US.
My point is that I would gladly pay for DRM-free, "fresh", 0-day, English only media content. I don't mind waiting for a region 2 edition of a good movie, and buying it, and I have some original, payed-for box sets of my favorite TV shows. The problem is not exactly price. The problem is convenience. And artificial barriers. I still can't figure out why can't I buy my favorite shows on iTunes Portugal. Or why all of the sudden I can't watch The Daily Show on their website. Oh, the problem is add revenue, you say? It can't be free anymore? No problem, I would *pay* for episodes of the The Daily Show... If I had a place on the web to buy them!
The industry is still clinging to outdated business models, that don't make any sense in our age. Come on! In a few days, the Mac crowd will be able to enjoy Steam, and Valve's games! Talk about globalization and interoperability! But why can't I watch South Park or Lost or House, legally, in Portugal, after it broadcasts on the US?!
You see, the issue is not always price. My treasure can be the next man's garbage. The issue is convenience. Ever wondered why malls and big store conglomerates are so popular? Heck, ever wondered why Amazon is so popular? Convenience. When I want something, I want it in the fastest, most convenient way possible. Amazon delivers me books to my doorstep, in a matter of days. I've tried to do something similar with some "brick and mortar" stores here. Just forget about it. They told me I would have to wait for 2/3 weeks for a specific book that I wanted to order. I said to them "never mind then". I went to Amazon, and 3 days latter, I had the book. And it probably cost me a bit more than doing it locally. But I had the book *fast*, because I needed it.
So there you have it. Media industries, start to think about "costumer convenience" (this includes DRM-free stuff as well), even before the prices. If the convenience is there, even if the price is not the cheapest, the people that want it will pick it up.
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
Get real. The downloads you get from iTunes and Amazon are typically shitty quality, compressed files or loaded with DRM.
Start selling vinyl FLAC rips or just straight digital FLACs and I'd definitely be buying them online all the time instead of buying cinyl, cd's, ripping them and putting them on scene sites.
Why publishers have done so little of this, I'll never understand. Downloading a 500MB album takes less than 10 minutes and is far less painful than travelling to a record store to MAYBE get what i'm looking for, then going through the hassle of ripping it so I don't have to fuck with the physical media ever again.
That is true, they could be doing that. In my experience, most people aren't doing that. Most people that I know that illegally download music are downloading tons of albums, either just for the fun of it or because they don't want to pay for it. Usually, they will say "if I like it, I'll pay for it." However, anyone can claim that and make themselves feel better. How many people actually DO that, I don't know. :)
My main point was that someone claiming "oh yeah, I would do it legally [if it was cheap enough]" is largely predicated on a subjective idea: what IS cheap enough?
Legal paid-for downloads for most music that most people listen to, in my experience, exists.
Most shows I only watch once so I'd rather pay a smaller fee for a rental of the episode and just watch it once.
What I currently is to download the first 2-3 episodes of a show on torrents and then buy the DVD season if I like it. It would be cheaper for me to be able to rent by episode and I would still get to watch them without ads at whenever I want on whatever device I want.
I agree, there are definitely cases that make it difficult. Most people that I've met, though, aren't interested in those hard-to-find/discontinued things. Most people go along with whatever is popular at the time. Slashdot is probably not a good sample of those people... and the typical Slashdotter is probably not the person targeted by recording industries' music production.
I actually called my cable provider and asked for BBC Canada so I could watch Top Gear. Found out after that BBC Canada only has re-runs. So I cancelled it and downloaded the torrents instead. I hope next season is different.
$1 per TV show with no commercials, $3-4 for a movie, and $3-4 for a CD. Because there are no bandwidth charges with P2P for the seller and very little overhead these prices are fair. The problem is that it will never happen. They would make all the money they claim to be "losing" but they are too greedy and always want more.
I completely stopped illegally downloading games when I became hooked on Steam. Between the convenience, the selection and the regular sales, I'd never go back.
There needs to be a Steam for TV shows and movies!
Also, there needs to be something better than iTunes. I hate the iTunes UI.
Nick
when you buy a DVD the first thing that happens when you try and watch it is you get told you are Criminal (FBI warning, don't pirate, etc) and then you have to sit through unskippable trailers, then crap dynamic menus, and finally after 10 min or more you get to the movie. With a pirate copy you get the movie first thing with no crap, which is what people buy. You would think that movie execs would put two and two together.
How in the world did they ever manage to produce a show before the internet?
Your argument is bunk. They made their money first from commercials over the airwaves, then from cable and DVD (and I suppose VHS) sales. So if someone wants to pay a buck a show, that's gravy to them. The show's been made and aired. Soon to be released on DVD.
Yeah, but that image doesn't show the part where you have to figure out what BitTorrent is, what a client is, figure out how to get, install, configure and run a client, reliably find what you want, extract and decompress it, find software that can burn it to a disc and then get it to actually do that - and then find out if what you got was actually a copy of the movie you wanted to see.
To an average consumer, buying a physical disc is easy. It's at the store, just like everything else, and doesn't require you to do anything you don't know how to do. Same goes for iTunes: click here, get iTunes, and searching in the search bar returns big friendly splash screens with listings, not screens full of XxX- WarezDePoT Avatar XviD Scnr RIP multisub FULL -XxX.rar.
I get all of my video from downloading - I never pay a cent. I would happily switch to a legit source and start paying, but as others have said, the service has to satisfy some criteria. Others have mentioned price - this is less important to me - and I'd lke to add two more issues: - In some countries, such as Canada where I live, most of the services that you might know, such as Rhapsody, Amazon Video, and Hulu are not available. We seem to be blocked from everything but iTunes. - Purchasing legit content should not lock me into a vendor's products. It is reasonable to ask for my money for your content - it is not reasonable to use my purchase to prevent me from buying your competitor's products. Unlike many here I have no philosophical problem with DRM, I just don't want the lock-in that happens to be associated with the current DRM options. So I keep using bit torrent.
This is anecdotal of course, but this is more or less true for me.
Ever since the advent of Amazon MP3, and eMusic, I haven't downloaded any more music (I've used Jamendo before which also provides DRM-free music, but they didn't have any of the artists I cared about).
Hulu has precluded me from downloading a lot of videos, and it's also got some interesting movies I'd never bother to rent at a video place (I recommend Ink, and Strictly Sexual).
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
It also doesn’t show the part where you have to figure out what a Video Store is, what a TV/DVD player is, figure out how to buy, install, plug in, and turn on a TV and DVD player, reliably find the DVD that you’re looking for, conquer the shrink-wrapping and weird locks on the DVD case, find a DVD player that will defeat regional locking and then get it to actually do that - and then find out that what you got had so much DRM and unskippable garbage content that it’s a pain in the ass to actually try to watch it (see my previous post).
All I’m saying is... you make it sound really difficult.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
...ain't it?
I am willing to pay the same per-month as I used to pay for cable. With some key differences from cable:
a) No commercials. Or few commercials, with the ability to **RATE them, and prevent duplicates.
b) I get to choose what I watch, when. Maybe I'm limited to "X" simultaneous downloads/viewings. That's fine. Heck, if it's one and then a slight increase for >1, I can live with that
c) No DRM. And yes, my cable had DRM, that's why I cancelled it (oooo, but digital is sooooo much better... except I can't fecking use it with my tuner)
That way, I don't have to be home at 7:00 on Friday night to see "show X". Once a show or episode it released, it should be available for me to watch.
And as for commercials and ratings... I don't mind all commercials. I do mind loud, intrusive, repetitive, and lame commercials. Heck, I have *DOWNLOADED* some of the funnier commercials (often Beer ads). As long as I'm not seeing the same damn thing every time, or a commercial more than every 20-30 minutes, and it doesn't SUCK, then I don't mind them. Heck, sometimes it helps me keep in touch with what products/services/movies/etc are coming.
If companies learn what people like for commercials, or - heck - learn what to advertise to specific people, then maybe we can all get most of what we want.
When Amazon started selling non-DRM music for about $1/track, or $10/album, I stopped illegally downloading music. I'm not willing to pay $17 for the one song I want on an album, or even $10 once it's in the bargain bin, but a buck? That's worth it.
I illegally download The Daily Show, even though it can be legally downloaded for free from their website. Torrents are just easier. My RSS reader drops the torrent files in a directory watched by my torrent client which deposits the video file in a shared directory I can mount from my Xbox. I get to watch it from the couch, and I don't even have to touch the computer.
I'd happily watch an ad laden AVI, or even pay a couple bucks a week if Comedy Central would provide the same easy experience we get from Bittorrent.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I use music services and pay for them, but for movies I come across several issues.
I use netflix, hulu, and even my xbox to aquire content. Most shows either don't hit one of them, or it takes forever, or in the case of movies hitting xbox they wont rent them for sometime only sell them, and they cost as much as a DVD for sub DVD quality. So in those cases I often bit-torrent it because like the article says, reasonable price, I am not paying 15 bucks for standard definition movie that I can only play through Xbox and can't lend to a friend (legally), when I could go to the store and pay the same, but going to the store is inconvinient, thus, bit-torrent. It is their own damn fault, and all in all I have only torrented 20 or so movies, a couple I thought were good enough to buy and add to my collection. If they would stop trying to squeeze pennies they would get more, I would have rented Avatar on Xbox for 5 bucks, but they only sold it there, so I downloaded it instead, partially because I was pissed that they would only sell it, and while a good show, it is not worth watching more than a couple of times in my life (not worth owning).
Last time I checked, "Because it is easier than doing the right thing" was not an excuse to break the law, violate copyright, or anything else.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Like what?
TV episodes. They are often available for free from the network's website - but they have annoying ads, are extremely low-quality, rely on Flash player, and often suffer from buffering issues and stuttering. If you download via bittorrent, you get it in much better quality, in a fraction of the time, and in a format compatible with your media server/set-top-box/game console.
... and then they built the supercollider.
The main reason for TV and movie piracy is not that it gets it you for free. It gets it for you now. Marketing hype machines drum things up for new films and shows globally - even if US is the initial target market, social media ensures that everyone who is interested hears about it.
New TV show episdes are discussed online minutes after US airing - any non-US fans either download the torrent or can't participate for weeks/months. Studios refuse to offer downloadable episodes in HD resolution at the same time worldwide when the network broadcast goes out because that would cut to the money they plan on getting out of overseas broadcast rights and DVD/Blu-ray sales. That must mean that the (additional) revenue from that must be greater than what they think they could get from actually selling their offering, worldwide, immediately.
Movies have this whole movie theater industry to support. Can't have downloadable movies the moment the film hits the theaters. Okay, that's fine - how about the moment it becomes available on Blu-ray/DVD? Again... obsolete model of selling plastic discs and shipping them around are overriding a simple global online availability and pirates just shrug and download a rip of the DVD or Blu-ray within hours of the discs being on the market somewhere.
Until studios figure this bit out - timely availability - pricing is completely irrelevant. Pirates will stick to torrents because they are available *now* while any legal option is - especially outside US - available at some undetermined point in the future.
Case in point; I would have been happy to pay for Avatar Blu-ray disc. But since it was not available on the same day on my market due to some silly reason, I saw little value in *waiting to be able to give money* when the content is available as a torrent and bandwidth is not an issue to me. Same is true for any TV shows I follow as I don't live in the US and my local market does not offer channels in HD. I could easily _pay_ for timely access to 720p or 1080p copies (preferrably without anal DRM, but could even accept that, within reason) but since no such service is available, I use the best available service - torrents. And hey, it's free too. A bonus, but not really the main benefit. The main benefit is that the stuff is available *now*.
Until studios start competing in availability and ease of access, price is a secondary factor.
This is why TV and movies cost more than they "should". I'll add the same point for watching professional sports. Why should Jerry Seinfeld have made $1M per episode? The short answer is, because he could. Let's look at the cause and effect a little more closely.
IF people are willing to pay $9 for a movie ticket, THEN Sandra Bullock can make $15M on her next movie.
This is not the same as "BECAUSE Sandra Bullock wants to make $15M on her next movie, we need to charge you $9 per ticket."
As a society, our ideas of the value of being entertained seems to be out of whack.
Finally, through use of price discrimination and market segmentation, the entertainment industry can, and will continue to, try to get $9 out of the person who's willing to spend it. The question is, why are they not trying to get $0.25 out of the person who's only willing to spend that? It's better to figure out a way to charge that user and get something out of them than to continue to not serve that section of the market.
Anyway, if a show only brought in $3M per episode instead of $5M, that could potentially only affect the few top named stars and the executive producer. If each of them accepted a pay cut, the other 500 people involved with the show could probably even take a modest pay increase.
www.clarke.ca
I would gladly pay for an easy DRM free legal alternative case in point - My media PC missed the 2nd half of smallville the other week because of an extra innings baseball game. So I thought to myself no problem, I'll just watch it online. So I went to the WB website. I then discovered that the WB website only lets you watch the previous weeks episode, it had been more than 7 days because I was a few episodes behind. Well I didn't want to skip an episode or wait a year till the entire season came out on dvd so what did I do - fired up bit torrent found the missing episode in HD that someone had graciously removed the commercials from and since their was no DMR my SageTV software could play it. I would gladly haved payed a buck or even two for this but I couldn't even do that.
Imagine a service where you could pay a monthly fee (fee != the current price gauging blueray strategy of 30$/movie, but something realistic like say, $8.99/mo) to stream whatever you want, whenever you want, without any extra overhead or hassle. Would people actually use this? or would they opt to go out and spend hundreds of dollars on disk space, cds, dvds, and countless hours of their own personal time downloading and preparing said content? It's a tough call...
I never would have guessed that netflix could be hit.
I love Top Gear and Doctor Who, like any self respecting fanboy.
In Top Gear's case, I don't want to wait until it's on BBCAmerica, and I don't want them to cut the News, or any of it(which they do to fit in advertising; also, it's censored). I'm willing to pay upwards to $2-$5 an episode if it meant I could download it from a source that's connected to a very fast pipe and released same day as the BBC UK airing.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I'll buy that.
In fairness, though, places like NBC and SCifi have a shitty setup for watching TV shows online. I can't quite put my finger on it, but clunky and ill-thought are words I'd use to describe those services. Hulu, however, is getting a lot of good word of mouth and is proving to be profitable. I believe that's a case of providers needing to aim higher.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I can concur with this. Since I've gotten a Playstation 3 and the ability to stream movies from Netflix, I've dramatically dropped the amount of movies and tv shows I used to get from private torrent trackers. It's extremely easy to do and costs very little comparatively.
Other services like Hulu also make it easier. I just wish Hulu would stop being so adamant about letting other platforms stream their service. Boxee & Skyfire both WANT to work with Hulu. They don't even try to block any of the advertising. But every time they find a way, Hulu stops it. Hulu does realize they're loosing customers & revenue doing that, don't they?
Count me out. I'll continue downloading Lost commercial-free, for free.
"Says they would pay" does NOT mean "would pay". Of course people say they would, but when you actually ask them to open their wallet instead of pirate things for free, I imagine you'll see very, very different results.
The fundamental problem I have with pirating is that you're telling these companies the demand is still there. So from their perspective all they have to do is impose even tighter control. Make it difficult enough to pirate and eventually people will come around and start buying entertainment "legally".
Want to make a real statement? Don't buy. Period. You don't need the latest movies, tv shows or music. Your lives aren't going to be incomplete if you're not devouring every last morsel entertainment companies try to fed us. If enough people completely stopped trying to acquire any of this things would change. Then they'd finally feel it and hopefully would get the message. Either that or they'd go out of business and someone else would get the message. But it's never going to happen. Everyone complains but few are truly willing to do anything about it.
I'd gladly pay to keep a good thing going, from gaming, software, films, music and others.
But when the studios who market and distribute it lock it the fuck down to stupid lengths, which end up getting broken, i usually end up just going to the freed content.
And if i can, i would try to find out the original source and pay them directly and skip past the shitty distributors entirely.
Of course, my pittance is barely going to quench the thirst of the content creator anyway, but every little helps.
And this is exactly why things end up cancelled, even if people done what i do.
Studios see "horrible sales", they kill the content and create even more retarded DRM solutions, they get broke again, rinse and repeat.
You can see this exact thing happening right now with Assassins Creed 2s awful DRM. And they will probably end up coming up with some other retarded DRM solution, like P2P authentication or some shit like that. (and sadly that would be secure against DDoS, but luckily not the crackers!)
Services like iTunes, Steam and the many others that are beginning to pop up will help massively.
In fact, outside of Steam, Games for Windows and similar game services, and the MMOs, PC gaming is pretty much dead other than the small handful of indie developers, Flash games, and the very lucky companies. (but even some of these companies are beginning to feel the hit of piracy)
Shame too, Steam is god awful, buggy, slow as fuck and still lets 3rd parties throw in their own DRM ON TOP of the Steams pretty acceptable DRM system. (not tried GfW)
DRM is the real content killer. They are self-defeating systems.
Some sort of DRM is fine, but when it gets to the point where you have no control over any of your own stuff that you bought, then it becomes a problem.
Sigh. The movie publishers are well aware their customers want a download service and are willing to pay for it. They are just not willing to supply it because it threatens their business plan. Publishers are their own worst enemy because they are totally focused on themselves and not the consumer. They do not have the mentality for change unless it clearly involves more money and more control for them than the old system. Old system dying? Well that's because of pirates and therefore the only course of action is to stop piracy in a way that does not change the system. Counter piracy with service? Don't be outrageous.
I pay around £15/m (~$22) for a monthly DVD rental for which there are 2 DVD's allocated to me at any one time - I make a list and the quicker I return DVDs the quicker I get the next batch. I get through say 10 per month.
To cut a long story short (yes, I had it typed up and everything), I just know that despite cutting out the major bottleneck (the mailman has the DVDs twice as long as me), internet distribution will result in at best me getting through say 10 per month for around £15/m.
Even if a publisher did agree to a internet distribution system, they would change the licensing to a per-view royalty, or increase the licensing fees for the "new platform", or some other method for countering any benefit anybody else might achieve. My rental service won't make any more money, the publishers wont make any more money, I wont get a better service.
Much more likely the service would be a lot worse. Royalties would be too high so it'd cost £20/m for 10 views, the publishers would be doing exclusivity farces so I'd need 5 different subscriptions to get the full range...
"Most people who illegally download movies, music and TV shows would pay for them if there was a cheap and legal service as convenient as file-sharing tools..."
Sorry, but why should this hold water?
I mean, it's not a valid excuse to steal a car with this excuse...it's certainly not a valid excuse to rob a bank...and I certainly hope it's not a valid excuse for stealing someone's identity.
Downloading a 500MB album takes less than 10 minutes
How much did you have to spend to buy a place to live where the Internet access is 1. that fast and 2. not capped to ten albums per month? Some places (especially Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and less-urban parts of the USA) are stuck with 5 GB/mo caps.
There will always be people who will spend time actively seeking out the illicit downloads, even though a legit one of the same thing is $1.50 and they could get it in less time.
More like $1.50 plus round-trip airfare to a country where the seller doesn't say "This product is not available in your country." And often, the legal MP3 or M4A download has prominent compression artifacts where the illegal FLAC download does not.
...
then they're just being naive if they think people will pay for an inferior product out of some sense of loyalty.
Loyalty shmoyalty! It's the law, dammit. You have to buy their product warts and all because they control it, and you must suffer the inconveniences which have been *legally* imposed.
You, sir, are a scofflaw. It is precisely this sort of rationalization which leads people to believe that they have *choices*, choices which are not supported in law and which are in fact breaking the law. My god, man, there could be children reading your post! Do you want them to learn that free will extends even to breaking the law? Whence goes society then? Anarchy! Anarchy I tell you!
Loose lips lose spit.
I throw all my change less than 25 cents into a big jar and jokingly call it my Retirement Fund.
After a few years when it gets full, I lug it to a grocery store that has one of those change sorters.
Last time I did it I had over 150$. Over 30$ was just in pennies. That is a lot of pennies. When I was
cashing it at the till I thought I might have broke a record or something, but I guess the girls at a
nearby restaurant share tips and I guess do the same thing for 6-700$ a shot.
for legal downloads of, say, TV shows, that work better than torrents (as in immediately available when the show airs, high bitrate, HD resolution, no DRM, fast direct downloads, no ads) if the price was reasonable.
It is/was a Russian site. They had the right model for selling music online.
1.) A nifty pricing scale that was based on file size. A 30-second song didn't cost as much as a 6-minute song.
2.) It offered a range of encodings; if you wanted a higher bitrate, you just payed a bit more.
3.) I forget the exact price-per-byte, but I remember paying about $0.10 to $0.15 per song.
4.) You could stream entire songs before buying.
5.) It was DRM-free.
Overnight, I went from stealing music to paying for music again. Managed to spend a couple hundred dollars there. Turned my friends on to it as well. At those prices, we even bought our own copy of something, even if our friends had it already. It was just more convenient to.
Then one day, the U.S. tries to shut them down. Mostly by pressuring U.S. based CC companies to stop allowing payments to them. Eventually they succeeded.
Been back to "thievery" ever since.
So is there a price where "pirates" will pay for music/tv/movies? Yes, yes, yes! I'd rather pay. But I won't be raped. And iTunes? They're in the raping business.
I would pay for a download only if its totally free of DRM and any other phone-home tech.
The only reason I consider pirated stuff first is because its more flexible/usable and under my control than exactly the same thing bought through legal channels with all the DRM intact.
Its rude, demeaning and unnecessarily invasive to require people to seek online permission every time they want to play locally stored stuff that they already legally own. Also its been clear that its at the whim of the company that they continue to support the use of customers own property.
In fact, Sony, Microsoft and Apple have all proved that they don't give one shit about customers expensive investments in their hardware and/or media once they've been paid for. All those companies are already guilty of arbitrarily remotely bricking multitudes of their own customers property with no warning or recourse available, just because the companies felt like changing their marketing strategy.
These people aren't really morons, they just have no credible frame of reference on pricing. Clueless. The high end of their industry is extremely well paid, top of the line just under investment bankers execs. All these pricing decisions are made by high level execs, with multimillionaire dollar a year salaries and perqs, all living in mansions with numerous servants, they all have fleets of high end cars, personal jets, yachts, yada yada.
They *think* what they are charging is chump change cheap..just too far removed from joe working stiff or joe struggling college student level income to relate, they just don't see it. They think 20 bucks isn't worth chasing after if it blows out of their wallet and goes down the street. Twenty bucks is what they leave for a tip for one drink at some high end watering hole. They just don't get it on their prices.
Most people who illegally download movies, music and TV shows would pay for them if there was a cheap and legal service as convenient as file-sharing tools like BitTorrent.
If only iTunes were easier to use...
ceci n'est pas un sig
"....if there was a cheap and legal service as convenient as file-sharing tools like BitTorrent...." - Apple iTune store already proved this point to some degree.
But shoplifting is also trivial in most department stores, yet most people pay.
Stealing from sidewalk mechandise stands is easy, yet most people pay.
Most people want to do the right thing, but the Music and Movie industry do not provide the option.
They provide : product priced above what the market wants to pay : region locked : in DRM locked formats (esp BlueRay): with unskippable ads : through outdated distribution models
Solve these issues and presto : most people will pay.
46137
I would. Out of respect. Because I think they deserve it, and feel bad if I have done something unfair.
Maybe you are just like those MAFIAA dicks, who don’t feel bad to overprice their “products” a hundred times, and have the balls to attach 20 pages of terms and conditions to it, that are designed to fuck you over an any possible event.
But normal people have a conscience. We know that we get something back from people that we treat nicely.
This is easily provable. Call up the hotline of any company you have a problem with. Now be nice and make that person there smile (
=value-giver) and he/she is very likely to feel a bigger urge to help you in return, than if you would just have complained and been a dick. (Of course some people themselves don’t follow the same rule, but nobody can stay unfriendly for long to someone who is just so likable.)
A friend of mine was very successful in his job managing a large web shop’s supplier side. His secret: He made his suppliers happy. So they sometimes just called because they liked talking to him. Some became friends. And he got lots of favors and good deals that nobody else got.
Don’t let some dicks drag you into their miserable dog-eat-dog world. You can gain so much more but either staying nice, or staying away, than by being crooked and unfriendly.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I wouldn't. I steal my MP3s all for free. I will never pay those greedy corporate bastards.
It's true! I'd pay a reasonable amount for software, MP3s and movies as long as they were DRM-free and I didn't have to put up with crap like the Amazon Downloader or iTunes.
Some time ago, a publisher released a book that I wanted. It was part of an ongoing series, and I had all the previous as e-books (paid for). However, now the publisher told the stores they can no longer sell these e-books for people from outside USA. This e-book is now simply unavailable to me. They don't sell it in my country, or anywhere else that will sell to me.
To add insult to injury, after several attempts to talk to the publisher, they never, even once, replied to my e-mails.
Need prove I was willing to pay ? I payed for all the others before. I even payed premium for those "just released" books.
My option ? A pirate download, of course. Which was, I'm said to say, readily available after a few days.
It amazes people they keep complaining about piracy, when they seem to simply be unwilling to sell to people who wants to pay. In this particular case, even the author of the book (who DID reply me) was baffled by the publisher's attitude. Yeah, protecting the authors my ass.
morcego
I would never watch an illegal ad laden AVI. I consider this an unwarranted third party intrusion into the movie producer / movie pirate relationship.
In other words, to make a la carte episode viewing at a reasonable price (50 cents or so), TV producers would have to:
1) Put greater emphasis on good writing and make sure every episode was worth watching.
2) Hire actors and actresses based on talent rather than fame, to save money on salaries.
3) Rely less on special effects and pyrotechnics.
I can't see a down side.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
I live in the UK, and for years have thought most entertainment will have to change to a service model.
Yes I do download from bittorent, being in the UK its things like 24, Chuck, Stargate etc... all TV that I will never really get a chance to watch when I want to watch it, so no loss there.
As well as this I have a LoveFilm Subscribtion which I pay £15 a month for unlimited DVD's which I thing is great!!
We are also very luck to have a cinema chain called CineWorld that charges £12 a month for unlimited cinema.
And finally you have Spotify which you pay £8.99 a month for all your music.
hmmm, can you see whats missing?? I WANT to pay £8-12 for all the TV series that I watch and try out some new ones, for that price I want access to all previous episodes and access to all series that I want, only company I see at the moment that can delivery this is Apple if they can work with the TV industry to this goal.
American TV shows are really not available in any easy manner to consumers. There is no online alternative that does offer these for download in most of Europe neither does cable in Europe offer a good alternative since they most often air old episodes over and over.
So the only comfortable alternative is to download. I would be willing to pay a reasonable price similar to Apple store for these shows but still there are no such alternative. Not even Apple offer TV shows in most of Europe and they are the biggest online store.
The industri really need to fix their distribution channels internationally, most people are willing to pay for this if it is made available in a reasonable faschion.
Then we have DRM... I pay for music downloads since they are now available DRM free on Apple Store. But they didn't used to be and TV shows and Movies are still crippled by this IDIOT system. It costs Hollywood millions in licensing, Pirates crack it in a few days and it's available on the Internet. So why would I wan't to pay for DRM content that plays on device X but not Y, why should consumers that pay be punished ... rather than those that download which doesn't have this problem.
I refuse to buy the media in an inferior quality for an inflated price. Perhaps that's why I'm the guy who still buys LP's and CD's. Why buy songs for $0.99, encoded at 320kb/s when I can buy the whole CD for $5?
Ever buy a Bad Movie?, often the previews are far better than the movies there supposedly made from, the Movie industry won't give your money back if you buy a movie that sucks, downloading and watching it is the only way to know if the movie is worth our hard earned income. I bet if you weight in the Bad movies that people wish they never bought Vs. the Movies that are "Pirated" the Movie industry is still making way to much money. Not to say that ether one "Pirating or making crap movies that you won't return money for" is right, I am sure however it all Balances out in the end.
I will be the first to say, even logged in, that I have paid to download whole albums, tv episodes, movies, etc.. that is, until the RIAA and MPAA stepped in and got the Russian government to do their dirty work for them. The last time I actually went into a HMV to buy a CD was almost 15 years ago. Everything I watch I download, and I really don't mind the lower quality video, because well, the price is right.
You Americans get HULU but this isn't even a choice in Canada, it's all blocked, so we really are screwed when it comes down to a download or pay for play option, and I have 3 credit cards all ready to go right now if they would only offer the option! Let me download a high quality episode, sans commercials, and I'd happily give up 50 cents to a dollar per episode, or with commercials, then free or 1/4 of the price.
Until then, I'll be happily giving my entertainment dollar to the movie theater for a 3D presentation, and that's about it.
Streaming HD movies for 1 euro/pv would increase profits for the drm nazis. I know i would pay for that quality if it were that cheap. They're probably screaming ruin at that number, but charging 5 or 6 euro for a movie you can view once is pretty much unrealistic. Having 5 people view it at 1 euro however might be worth at least a tryout ... or not, can always stick to the past like that fly stuck to that paper (i heard she died)
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)
I would download things first just to preview them or watch/play them commercial free, but honestly nothing is better that actually owning a physical copy of something.
So even though I would download it first, if I like it I'd usually go and buy a copy to feel accomplished.
If it's an album, you feel like a true fan for having a copy.
If it's a book..there's the nostalgia of reading it physically, the old-fashioned way. Having to take care of it is also part of the experience.
Movies and stuff like that are awesome on DVD because I can then lend them to a friend/son and say "I think you're gonna love this one."
However, when there's ridiculous DRM on everything it takes away from the authentic experience which I would normally have.