General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: According to your values, is illegally downloading a song, TV show, or movie immoral? [View all]tuhaybey
(76 posts)I don't think it is really a moral question at all. Corporate profits are a practical, economic, issue more than a moral one IMO.
But, even on that front, I don't think it is bad at present. Right now, the media industry just isn't offering anything comparable. Torrent has a wider selection, titles are available earlier, a smarter network design and obviously wins on pricing. If the media industry really can't offer something comparable, then we shouldn't use laws to prop up an outdated model. If that's the case, they will just need to retool and focus on product placement more and paying viewers less or some such thing. The better approach for them in the short run though, IMO, would be to try to come up with a more competitive offering. Services that have more titles, get them quicker, and are available at a more reasonable price. The media industry needs to offer a Netflix-type service, for a Netflix-type price, but with a far, far, larger catalog of content. Right now, the only services with that kind of catalog charge many times as much as cable tv did despite not having even a small fraction of the infrastructure costs. That's just not going to hold water.
If traditional media distribution mechanisms only survive because we force people to use them, that means they shouldn't survive. I think they can find a profitable role in the modern content distribution world, but frankly, a lot of these companies grew so huge because they had a lock on distribution models that are no longer relevant like getting physical CDs into stores and whatnot. They do probably need to downsize significantly to reflect their new role in a world where distribution isn't the problem that needs solving.