Quote Originally Posted by Lemur View Post
Piracy will always be with us. But as Netflix has demonstrated in market after market, a cheap and convenient alternative will put a massive dent in the problem.
Media is actually the area in which I think piracy is the biggest problem at the moment. Digital distribution has already become the norm for the games industry, and that will only become more true over the next few years. Television is still very much behind the curve though. I cannot count the number of television shows that I have pirated en masse to catch up on, and then moved over to watching them on live broadcasts. By doing this, I went from being a non-watcher of the program to a watcher, but I only got there because of piracy. While some shows can be watched quickly and in bulk on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, many shows aren't on those services and even when they are it's very common for the most recent season to be missing, particularly if it's currently airing. This system really should be a no-brainer. Give me a way to stream all past episodes of your show, including the episode that aired 4 days ago, so that I can get up to speed. If your service is convenient enough, I'd even tolerate the commercials. Win-win for everyone... so why aren't very many places doing this?