IMO, you either produce something or you don't. Someone may be able to interject themselves into your transactions with your customers, but, ultimately, the power lies with the producer (they can just stop producing).
IMO, you either produce something or you don't. Someone may be able to interject themselves into your transactions with your customers, but, ultimately, the power lies with the producer (they can just stop producing).
It's not that easy. This presupposes that there isn't another producer that is capable of creating a comparable product. There's many studios that can deliver high quality movies. If Disney stops producing new content, they can continue to coast on the old content but those other studios will step in and take a growing amount of Disney's share of the market. As long as the new studios are willing to make a deal with the intermediaries, those intermediaries won't be the ultimate loser in this scenario. Disney will be.
Now if all the producers of high quality content decide not to deal with an intermediary then the story plays out a bit differently. In that scenario everyone is a loser and we go back to piracy being the best solution for most consumers.