Scarcity Is A Shitty Business Model

Wonderful point. There's a Doctorow article I read somewhere that essentially put forth the following logic for digital distribution:

There will be a group of people who would not acquire the content unless it was digital. They may buy or pirate it. This is the group of interest. If more people who weren't going to get the content (b/c of lack of exposure, lack of interest, etc.) pay for it than don't pay for it, the digital venture is worthwhile (This ignores that some people who would have bought it non-digitally may pirate it, though that group is small; if you wish to support to movie by paying for it, you'll most likely do it regardless of medium)

For example: 100 people would have bought the movie if it was only physical.

100 other people will have never heard of the movie unless it is released digitally. Of these 100, 75 people buy the movie, 25 pirate it.

By listing it digitally, the publisher gets 175 people's worth of profit, and 25 people's worth of "loss". Therefore, it is worth listing digitally.

There's only one way to stop the studios and labels from making bills that restrict the Internet, and that is to convince them to adopt a modern digital strategy and embrace the qualities of the Internet, rather than keep fighting them.

I would also like to see more articles that debunk their claims of hundreds of billions of dollars lost every year due to piracy, because too many politicians believe them - even those that are against SOPA/PIPA. If politicians find out the real truth, and MPAA/RIAA lose credibility on piracy losses, they might actually have to start thinking about modernizing their digital strategy.

> We would have paid good money to watch Sherlock Holmes or Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. But it simply was not an option. So we went with a TV show that was free and then went to bed.

Free? Surely Fred has paid for his cable subscription. And paid dearly if he has any HD channels. And then there are the loud, terrible, annoying commercials.

It costs at least $50/month to get anything half decent on cable TV here in BC. More if you want HD stuff. Many folks I know spend about $100/month on cable.

Tinker Tailor came out on Bluray a few days ago on Pirate Bay.

I'd pay top-dollar to rent a movie while it's still in theaters (especially in lieu of a low-quality, pirated option). If the rental price decreases as the film leaves theaters, they could still maintain a strong sense of the value of their product. It looks like it's working perfectly well in an ecosystem like Steam, where a new release sells a truckload at $60, then again at $30, then again at during a firesale at $5.