There was at least one revenge porn site that published people's names, addresses, phone numbers, and links to the person's facebook profiles. They also created a service that would allow you to remove those images - for a few hundred dollars. If you don't want those results showing up on google whenever someone googled your name, you were pressured to pay-up.
I'm not really surprised that pro-piracy Mike Masnick is also in favor of revenge porn extortion.
Wow, the climate deniers are out in force on Slashdot today. Out of curiousity, are you paid? Do you all get instant alerts whenever the subject of climate is posted on Slashdot, like the Digg Patriots? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
> "So-called patent trolls are not generally interested in shutting down infringers"
It's a little more complicated than that. First: they care mostly about the big-budget podcasters (like Adam Corolla, Marc Marron, Stuff You Should Know, etc.). If a bunch of little guys get shut down, they don't care because they weren't trying to extort money from those guys. Secondly, they have an incentive to keep their prices high to milk the big-guys. If they offer a "$10/year price to all podcasters", they can't effectively milk the big guys. They want the big guys to pay $10,000/year or more. This causes a conflict because you don't want to let the little guys pay a small price when you also want the big buys to pay a big sum. Perhaps they'll try to charge podcasters per-download or something (so they can milk everybody based on their assumed revenue), but that would be hard to track when we're talking about tens of thousands of podcasts.
Whatever the case, Personal Audio doesn't really have much of an incentive to keep a lot of small-time podcasters in business.
I mean, you could use traditional sales as an example. Businesses have an incentive to keep prices low because they want to sell to as many people as possible. At the same time, there's a limit to how low they want to sell. If you have the option of getting $10 profit from 10 people (=$100) or $1 profit from 50 people (=$50), you're better off selling for a $10 profit. It's not actually in your interest to sell to as many people as possible. Your goal is to maximize profit, and that means not selling to those 40 people, unless you can come up with some clever way to segment the market and still capture their sales (without pissing off your higher-paying $10 customers).
Have fun dealing with everybody trying to get free internet. My neighbor didn't lock his down, and once his internet started running like molasses, he checked and found six different people using his internet at the one time. Personally, I'd be worried not only about slow internet, but also about facilitating illegal activities on the internet (not only piracy, but child porn and other ugly activities).
Geez, it's 5%. Stop pretending like this is an onerous burden on developers. Commercial 3d engines used to cost a flat fee in the mid-six-figure range (i.e. $250,000 to $500,000).
Unreal has had some good licensing terms for years. Three years ago, I their offer was 25% of sales and your first $50,000 of income is free (i.e. you owed nothing to Epic if your game grossed less than $50,000).
I'm not how to respond to your post. Did you read the comment above mine that said that the reason the middle-class is struggling is because Americans are paying twice as much money in taxes as in 1950? Your point about who the taxes are hitting may be correct (and I'm not going to argue against it), but I was responding to the false claim about taxes going up -- which is generally a Republican claim that we're all getting overtaxed, and things were so much better back in the 1950s.
Tax receipts in 1957, per capita:... about $3900... Tax receipts in 2013, per capita: $8754. Or a bit more than double that 1957 per-capita after you adjust for inflation
Yeah, but you have to take into account the fact that the reason that people are paying more taxes is because people are earning more today than they did in 1950. If the average income of a person in 2014 is twice what it was in 1950, then that "double the taxes" thing simply disappears because it means people are still paying the same *percentage* of their income to the federal government. The way you state your argument, you make it sound like people are paying twice as much money (as a percentage of their income) in 2014 as they did in 1950, which is simply not true. Here's a graph of the average incomes in the US over the past 100 years. The dollar amounts have been adjusted to 2006-dollars, and you'll note that the average income has roughly doubled (from around $25,000/year in 1950 to $50,000/year in 2004): http://visualizingeconomics.co...
Given that being in Congress [rollcall.com] makes one quite wealthy [opensecrets.org], perhaps a lot of that redistribution is strictly for the benefit of those IN Government. It's still a Federal Government by the people and of the people, but increasingly FOR Government, not for the people.
That may be true that people in government can become quite wealthy, but to say that the redistribution is strictly for the benefit of those in government is missing a sense of scale. The amount of wealth gained by government officials is a drop in the bucket compared to tax revenue or the US economy in general. First of all, you're comparing the net worth of members of congress (i.e. most of them were millionaires *before* they gained office). In order for your argument to work, you need to track the amount of money gained by members of congress as a result of being in congress. Saying that (as the articles claim) the combined net worth of those members of congress is over a billion dollars is mostly irrelevant. Saying that members of congress earned a billion dollars a year as a result of being in congress is much more relevant (but that's not what the articles claim). Keep in mind that the US government is bringing in a tax revenue of 3.0 trillion dollars in 2014. Even if we (falsely) claimed that members of congress were pulling in an addition 1 billion dollars in income each year as a result of being in government (which they clearly are not, certainly not in a single year), it would still mean that their additional income would be 1 billion compared to 3,000 billion in taxes. That works out to 0.03% of the federal tax revenue. The argument that some large share of the tax revenue is simply going to enrich members of congress just doesn't make sense.
Do you have a source? Because I recently looked at federal revenue as a percentage of GDP. It's been surprisingly constant since World War 2. Specifically, government revenue (i.e. taxes) have fluctuated between 15% and 20% during that entire period.
Look at the graph "Government Receipts and Expenditures as a Fraction of GDP", it's the second chart on this webpage:
Source: http://www.deptofnumbers.com/m...
You know that Autodesk buys up their competitors, don't you? It sucks. Softimage was a competitor, and they were selling for a lot less than 3d Max. It seems to me that Autodesk accomplished what it set-out to do by buying Softimage: to eliminate a competitor. It doesn't matter what they do with it afterwards, getting rid of a "fast moving" competitor who was selling at a much-lower cost was the goal.
Team Fortress 2 and Portal 1 didn't *used* to be free-to-play. You used to have to buy them. At this point, they're so old that they've reach "bargain bin" prices (in this case, free). There's a huge difference between "used to cost money, but are now free to play" and "has always been free to play" - that difference being the fact that the pay model is what paid for their development, so it's kind of irrelevant to say "they're great games and they're freemium games" (as if freemium payments actually paid for their development into awesome games).
You have to admit that he's got a point: some pirates are pirates because pirating is cheaper than paying. I don't see why that fact is "off limits" in the discussion.
Didn't Gender Genie already attempt to do this? https://www.google.com/search?...
(I say "attempt" because I found that even in cases where I wasn't trying to fool it, it would often come up with the wrong gender.)
I don't think the problem is that the Music Industry is claiming so much of the profit from music-streaming services. I think the problem is that there isn't much money going around when it's all based on ad-revenue. I mean, if you can make $10/month in music sales from people buying music (via CDs, iTunes, etc), or you can make $1/month from people who stream their music (via ads), and then we complain that music companies are taking 60% or 70% of that $1/month, is the real problem the fact that the music industry is taking 60% or 70% from music-streaming services, or is the real problem the fact that ad-supported music results in low revenue?
I know that "music companies are being stupid and greedy" is implied by the piece, but I'm not sure it's the fault of the music industry that ad-supported music is just a crappy source of revenue.
If you want to see what American fascism would look like, well this is it.
Honestly, if this is what American fascism looks like, then American fascism looks silly and weak.
Look, I'm all about fairness. I think both sides of the political divide should be subject to the same level of government scrutiny. Preferentially enforcing laws on one group and not another is a kind of discrimination.
At the same time, some of your examples are some really sketchy Republicans.
James O’Keefe - You mean the guy who put out a doctored video in order to deceitfully sway public opinion? http://mediamatters.org/resear...
Dinesh D’Souza - If he's guilty, he's guilty. I mean it's not like Republicans haven't done underhanded and shadey things in the past, so I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if D'Sousa was doing illegal things. For example, how about this story about how Republicans repeatedly called a voter-pickup telephone number so that they could stop real (mostly democratic) voters from getting to the election polls on the day of an election? http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
In October 2002, Charles McGee, executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party, was mailed a Democratic flier that offered Election Day rides to the polls. The circular listed telephone numbers of party offices in five cities and towns.
"I paused and thought to myself, I might find out -- I might think of an idea of disrupting those operations," McGee later testified.... When voting began Nov. 5, McGee's plan worked like a charm. For two crucial hours, an Idaho telecommunications firm tied up Democratic and union phone lines, bringing their get-out-the-vote plans to a halt. The effort helped John E. Sununu (R) win his Senate seat by 51 to 47 percent, a 19,151-vote margin.
McGee and two other participants -- Republican National Committee regional political director James Tobin and GOP consultant Allen Raymond-- have been found guilty of criminally violating federal communications law. Tobin will be sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Concord, N.H.
Or how about New Jersey governor's latest trick of shutting down traffic lanes to punish a mayor who wouldn't endorse him for governor? http://www.nydailynews.com/new...
How about the North Carolina's admission (on camera) that election changes were being pushed forward, not because of voter fraud, but rather, to "kick democrat's butts" (i.e. stop Democratic voters from actually voting). Jump to 3:30: http://www.thedailyshow.com/wa...
If your examples are examples of "fascism", then how is this also not an example of "fascism" coming from Republicans?
Republicans have used a lot of dirty tricks to win elections, so it's not really surprising that they'd end up in the crosshairs of investigations.
Considering that his main business isn't making music, I'm sure he'd be fine with people pirating it so that he can become more famous - which makes it easier for him to sell other stuff. Of course, most musicians don't have the large number of "other products" to sell to the world that he does, so he's at a large advantage over them.
And while listening to this crap I immediately thought to myself "How the F*** do we have copyrights for 120 years to protect auto-generated crap like this?"
That's because copyright are protecting an entire *class* of works. In other words: you shouldn't hold up the worst example and then ask that question. We certainly wouldn't want anyone in the government making decisions about "this is good, it gets a long copyright but that is crap it shouldn't get copyright protection".
> "make 15% more per year, on average, from paying customers of streaming services like Spotify or Rdio than it does from the average customer who buys downloads, CDs or both."
I should point out that people should parse that sentence very carefully to understand the situation. The summary says the labels make 15% more per year, on average, from paying customers of streaming services. Most people aren't paying for streaming services. Here's one source that says that only about 25% of Spotify's regular users are actually paying customers: http://paidcontent.org/2013/03/12/spotify-hits-6-million-paid-users-as-market-for-music-streaming-heats-up/
There's also the fact that people who are free-users of Spotify might be buying less music because of it (i.e. the existence of Spotify might be lowering music sales among the "not paying for spotify" group).
So, should the labels love streaming music? I don't know. But, I'm very skeptical of the notion that the labels should love streaming music over regular music sales (at least as it existed 15 years ago).
No, it's offensive because it suggests that people are where they are *simply* because of societal bias. It's a way for people who have not achieved something to explain away their lack of success (and other people's success) by reference to societal barriers and advantages. I consider it to be another variation of "everybody who is rich got there by exploiting other people (possibly illegally)." It's a way to hate on other people while coddling the underdog's feelings.
I recognize that we aren't all exactly identical in the way other people perceive us. I also recognize that there is a bias against (say) women and minorities in computing. I think it's fair to attempt to change that. Using loaded words like "privilege" however, is really just an exercise in giving the have-nots an excuse to hate the people who have. It's also worth pointing out that words like "privilege" are actually simplistic explanations for what's going on. You'll generally find that people (white, black, male, female) have a variety of different advantages and disadvantages in comparison to other people. As a white person, if I say I'm going to be a rapper or a pro-athlete, people will be more skeptical than if I were black and saying that. Based on the way "privilege" is being used, we could say that black people are "privileged" in that narrow area. I'm sure we're also well aware of the fact that women are "privileged" in the fact that men want them and they have easy access to sex. That's the other reason I hate the word "privilege" because it's used like it's some kind of widely-valid general statement about a group of people, when it's actually a statement about some very narrow aspect of their lives. It's more accurate to say that this or that person has an advantage in aspectd x,y,z of their lives while having disadvantages in aspects a,b,c of their lives.
The question is: what can we do to permanently remove illegal filesharing from the web? It's offensive to everyone who creates digital media for a living that these kinds of sites operate with impunity.
No, you don't. You have to assume that more than 0% of the people pirating it would've bought it if it were not available for free. I know people who used to buy stuff, and then they discovered piracy and now they don't buy anymore. They're part of that "people who would've bought if piracy wasn't an option" group.
(Gah. I can't believe you were modded "5 Insightful". Sometimes I hate Slashdot.)
Simple solution: Stop hiding your TV shows and films behind a wall of artificial scarcity.
So, the solution you're proposing to studios is "give everything away for free!!" Yeah, that sounds like a great solution. Seriously, does anyone on Slashdot think about the needs and desires of the studios, or are all "solutions" really just kneejerk strategies which result in consumers getting as much stuff as possible while paying nothing?
Slashdot Mirror
There was at least one revenge porn site that published people's names, addresses, phone numbers, and links to the person's facebook profiles. They also created a service that would allow you to remove those images - for a few hundred dollars. If you don't want those results showing up on google whenever someone googled your name, you were pressured to pay-up.
I'm not really surprised that pro-piracy Mike Masnick is also in favor of revenge porn extortion.
Wow, the climate deniers are out in force on Slashdot today. Out of curiousity, are you paid? Do you all get instant alerts whenever the subject of climate is posted on Slashdot, like the Digg Patriots? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
Your comment is a good example of the fake victimization shtick of American conservatives. Take note everyone.
> "So-called patent trolls are not generally interested in shutting down infringers"
It's a little more complicated than that. First: they care mostly about the big-budget podcasters (like Adam Corolla, Marc Marron, Stuff You Should Know, etc.). If a bunch of little guys get shut down, they don't care because they weren't trying to extort money from those guys. Secondly, they have an incentive to keep their prices high to milk the big-guys. If they offer a "$10/year price to all podcasters", they can't effectively milk the big guys. They want the big guys to pay $10,000/year or more. This causes a conflict because you don't want to let the little guys pay a small price when you also want the big buys to pay a big sum. Perhaps they'll try to charge podcasters per-download or something (so they can milk everybody based on their assumed revenue), but that would be hard to track when we're talking about tens of thousands of podcasts.
Whatever the case, Personal Audio doesn't really have much of an incentive to keep a lot of small-time podcasters in business.
I mean, you could use traditional sales as an example. Businesses have an incentive to keep prices low because they want to sell to as many people as possible. At the same time, there's a limit to how low they want to sell. If you have the option of getting $10 profit from 10 people (=$100) or $1 profit from 50 people (=$50), you're better off selling for a $10 profit. It's not actually in your interest to sell to as many people as possible. Your goal is to maximize profit, and that means not selling to those 40 people, unless you can come up with some clever way to segment the market and still capture their sales (without pissing off your higher-paying $10 customers).
Have fun dealing with everybody trying to get free internet. My neighbor didn't lock his down, and once his internet started running like molasses, he checked and found six different people using his internet at the one time. Personally, I'd be worried not only about slow internet, but also about facilitating illegal activities on the internet (not only piracy, but child porn and other ugly activities).
Geez, it's 5%. Stop pretending like this is an onerous burden on developers. Commercial 3d engines used to cost a flat fee in the mid-six-figure range (i.e. $250,000 to $500,000).
Unreal has had some good licensing terms for years. Three years ago, I their offer was 25% of sales and your first $50,000 of income is free (i.e. you owed nothing to Epic if your game grossed less than $50,000).
I'm not how to respond to your post. Did you read the comment above mine that said that the reason the middle-class is struggling is because Americans are paying twice as much money in taxes as in 1950? Your point about who the taxes are hitting may be correct (and I'm not going to argue against it), but I was responding to the false claim about taxes going up -- which is generally a Republican claim that we're all getting overtaxed, and things were so much better back in the 1950s.
Yeah, but you have to take into account the fact that the reason that people are paying more taxes is because people are earning more today than they did in 1950. If the average income of a person in 2014 is twice what it was in 1950, then that "double the taxes" thing simply disappears because it means people are still paying the same *percentage* of their income to the federal government. The way you state your argument, you make it sound like people are paying twice as much money (as a percentage of their income) in 2014 as they did in 1950, which is simply not true. Here's a graph of the average incomes in the US over the past 100 years. The dollar amounts have been adjusted to 2006-dollars, and you'll note that the average income has roughly doubled (from around $25,000/year in 1950 to $50,000/year in 2004): http://visualizingeconomics.co...
That may be true that people in government can become quite wealthy, but to say that the redistribution is strictly for the benefit of those in government is missing a sense of scale. The amount of wealth gained by government officials is a drop in the bucket compared to tax revenue or the US economy in general. First of all, you're comparing the net worth of members of congress (i.e. most of them were millionaires *before* they gained office). In order for your argument to work, you need to track the amount of money gained by members of congress as a result of being in congress. Saying that (as the articles claim) the combined net worth of those members of congress is over a billion dollars is mostly irrelevant. Saying that members of congress earned a billion dollars a year as a result of being in congress is much more relevant (but that's not what the articles claim). Keep in mind that the US government is bringing in a tax revenue of 3.0 trillion dollars in 2014. Even if we (falsely) claimed that members of congress were pulling in an addition 1 billion dollars in income each year as a result of being in government (which they clearly are not, certainly not in a single year), it would still mean that their additional income would be 1 billion compared to 3,000 billion in taxes. That works out to 0.03% of the federal tax revenue. The argument that some large share of the tax revenue is simply going to enrich members of congress just doesn't make sense.
Do you have a source? Because I recently looked at federal revenue as a percentage of GDP. It's been surprisingly constant since World War 2. Specifically, government revenue (i.e. taxes) have fluctuated between 15% and 20% during that entire period.
Look at the graph "Government Receipts and Expenditures as a Fraction of GDP", it's the second chart on this webpage: Source: http://www.deptofnumbers.com/m...
You know that Autodesk buys up their competitors, don't you? It sucks. Softimage was a competitor, and they were selling for a lot less than 3d Max. It seems to me that Autodesk accomplished what it set-out to do by buying Softimage: to eliminate a competitor. It doesn't matter what they do with it afterwards, getting rid of a "fast moving" competitor who was selling at a much-lower cost was the goal.
Team Fortress 2 and Portal 1 didn't *used* to be free-to-play. You used to have to buy them. At this point, they're so old that they've reach "bargain bin" prices (in this case, free). There's a huge difference between "used to cost money, but are now free to play" and "has always been free to play" - that difference being the fact that the pay model is what paid for their development, so it's kind of irrelevant to say "they're great games and they're freemium games" (as if freemium payments actually paid for their development into awesome games).
I'd bet that someone else got the #1 spot in COD and then Kim Dotcom pirated the account. Publicity stunts and piracy are his MO.
You have to admit that he's got a point: some pirates are pirates because pirating is cheaper than paying. I don't see why that fact is "off limits" in the discussion.
Didn't Gender Genie already attempt to do this? https://www.google.com/search?...
(I say "attempt" because I found that even in cases where I wasn't trying to fool it, it would often come up with the wrong gender.)
Here's a map (which is about a year old, to be fair): http://cdn.iphoneincanada.ca/w...
You'll note that WhatsApp doesn't have a whole lot of usage in the US. It's quite popular in Europe and the South America.
I don't think the problem is that the Music Industry is claiming so much of the profit from music-streaming services. I think the problem is that there isn't much money going around when it's all based on ad-revenue. I mean, if you can make $10/month in music sales from people buying music (via CDs, iTunes, etc), or you can make $1/month from people who stream their music (via ads), and then we complain that music companies are taking 60% or 70% of that $1/month, is the real problem the fact that the music industry is taking 60% or 70% from music-streaming services, or is the real problem the fact that ad-supported music results in low revenue?
I know that "music companies are being stupid and greedy" is implied by the piece, but I'm not sure it's the fault of the music industry that ad-supported music is just a crappy source of revenue.
If you want to see what American fascism would look like, well this is it.
Honestly, if this is what American fascism looks like, then American fascism looks silly and weak.
Look, I'm all about fairness. I think both sides of the political divide should be subject to the same level of government scrutiny. Preferentially enforcing laws on one group and not another is a kind of discrimination.
At the same time, some of your examples are some really sketchy Republicans.
James O’Keefe - You mean the guy who put out a doctored video in order to deceitfully sway public opinion? http://mediamatters.org/resear...
Dinesh D’Souza - If he's guilty, he's guilty. I mean it's not like Republicans haven't done underhanded and shadey things in the past, so I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if D'Sousa was doing illegal things. For example, how about this story about how Republicans repeatedly called a voter-pickup telephone number so that they could stop real (mostly democratic) voters from getting to the election polls on the day of an election? http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
In October 2002, Charles McGee, executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party, was mailed a Democratic flier that offered Election Day rides to the polls. The circular listed telephone numbers of party offices in five cities and towns.
"I paused and thought to myself, I might find out -- I might think of an idea of disrupting those operations," McGee later testified.... When voting began Nov. 5, McGee's plan worked like a charm. For two crucial hours, an Idaho telecommunications firm tied up Democratic and union phone lines, bringing their get-out-the-vote plans to a halt. The effort helped John E. Sununu (R) win his Senate seat by 51 to 47 percent, a 19,151-vote margin.
McGee and two other participants -- Republican National Committee regional political director James Tobin and GOP consultant Allen Raymond-- have been found guilty of criminally violating federal communications law. Tobin will be sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Concord, N.H.
Or how about New Jersey governor's latest trick of shutting down traffic lanes to punish a mayor who wouldn't endorse him for governor? http://www.nydailynews.com/new...
How about the North Carolina's admission (on camera) that election changes were being pushed forward, not because of voter fraud, but rather, to "kick democrat's butts" (i.e. stop Democratic voters from actually voting). Jump to 3:30: http://www.thedailyshow.com/wa...
If your examples are examples of "fascism", then how is this also not an example of "fascism" coming from Republicans?
Republicans have used a lot of dirty tricks to win elections, so it's not really surprising that they'd end up in the crosshairs of investigations.
Considering that his main business isn't making music, I'm sure he'd be fine with people pirating it so that he can become more famous - which makes it easier for him to sell other stuff. Of course, most musicians don't have the large number of "other products" to sell to the world that he does, so he's at a large advantage over them.
And while listening to this crap I immediately thought to myself "How the F*** do we have copyrights for 120 years to protect auto-generated crap like this?"
That's because copyright are protecting an entire *class* of works. In other words: you shouldn't hold up the worst example and then ask that question. We certainly wouldn't want anyone in the government making decisions about "this is good, it gets a long copyright but that is crap it shouldn't get copyright protection".
> "make 15% more per year, on average, from paying customers of streaming services like Spotify or Rdio than it does from the average customer who buys downloads, CDs or both."
I should point out that people should parse that sentence very carefully to understand the situation. The summary says the labels make 15% more per year, on average, from paying customers of streaming services. Most people aren't paying for streaming services. Here's one source that says that only about 25% of Spotify's regular users are actually paying customers: http://paidcontent.org/2013/03/12/spotify-hits-6-million-paid-users-as-market-for-music-streaming-heats-up/
There's also the fact that people who are free-users of Spotify might be buying less music because of it (i.e. the existence of Spotify might be lowering music sales among the "not paying for spotify" group).
So, should the labels love streaming music? I don't know. But, I'm very skeptical of the notion that the labels should love streaming music over regular music sales (at least as it existed 15 years ago).
No, it's offensive because it suggests that people are where they are *simply* because of societal bias. It's a way for people who have not achieved something to explain away their lack of success (and other people's success) by reference to societal barriers and advantages. I consider it to be another variation of "everybody who is rich got there by exploiting other people (possibly illegally)." It's a way to hate on other people while coddling the underdog's feelings.
I recognize that we aren't all exactly identical in the way other people perceive us. I also recognize that there is a bias against (say) women and minorities in computing. I think it's fair to attempt to change that. Using loaded words like "privilege" however, is really just an exercise in giving the have-nots an excuse to hate the people who have. It's also worth pointing out that words like "privilege" are actually simplistic explanations for what's going on. You'll generally find that people (white, black, male, female) have a variety of different advantages and disadvantages in comparison to other people. As a white person, if I say I'm going to be a rapper or a pro-athlete, people will be more skeptical than if I were black and saying that. Based on the way "privilege" is being used, we could say that black people are "privileged" in that narrow area. I'm sure we're also well aware of the fact that women are "privileged" in the fact that men want them and they have easy access to sex. That's the other reason I hate the word "privilege" because it's used like it's some kind of widely-valid general statement about a group of people, when it's actually a statement about some very narrow aspect of their lives. It's more accurate to say that this or that person has an advantage in aspectd x,y,z of their lives while having disadvantages in aspects a,b,c of their lives.
The question is: what can we do to permanently remove illegal filesharing from the web? It's offensive to everyone who creates digital media for a living that these kinds of sites operate with impunity.
No, you don't. You have to assume that more than 0% of the people pirating it would've bought it if it were not available for free. I know people who used to buy stuff, and then they discovered piracy and now they don't buy anymore. They're part of that "people who would've bought if piracy wasn't an option" group.
(Gah. I can't believe you were modded "5 Insightful". Sometimes I hate Slashdot.)
Simple solution: Stop hiding your TV shows and films behind a wall of artificial scarcity.
So, the solution you're proposing to studios is "give everything away for free!!" Yeah, that sounds like a great solution. Seriously, does anyone on Slashdot think about the needs and desires of the studios, or are all "solutions" really just kneejerk strategies which result in consumers getting as much stuff as possible while paying nothing?