Quote Originally Posted by SlumpBuster View Post
This about sums it up.

http://www.slate.com/id/2298871/?from=rss

I frequent used record stores buying out of print LPs and cassettes. I foresee a future where my kids are frequenting very similar looking stores full of CDs and DVDs. Its all about access.
The author makes some decent points until he arrives at the conclusion that because the landscape is too expensive and complicated for him, he recommends illegal downloading. His points just sound like another entitled techie who thinks that all content should be available to him wherever and whenever he wants. Yeah, that's all well and good, but even with illegal downloading, he's not there yet.

And I think the achilles heel of his article (and many others) is claiming that the decline of the music industry is doomed to repeat itself with the movie industry. First off, techies consistently fail to notice that audio and video content are consumed very differently.

Audio has trended towards portability for decades -- the emergence of the MP3 player is just an extension of existing trends. Downloading music files takes a matter of minutes, and it doesn't brush up against residential and mobile data caps.

Video on the other hand is increasingly consumed on larger and higher resolution TVs. Yes, streaming video usage is going up and video on the go is increasing. But, the average viewing time for all networked video remains less than 20 minutes/day, while TV viewing time continues to increase and is now closing in on 5 1/2 hours a day. Cable/pay TV penetration rates remain over 80%, which is about the same as cell phones.

The author of the article presumes that it's only "fortysomethings" that can't figure out Bit Torrent, and that illegal downloading is simply the norm for people in their 20s and 30s. That's a baseless presumption, and one that techies make all the time. I've not seen any actual viewing studies that confirm this trend.

Netflix has come closest to producing a killer app because their streaming service comes with most purchased set top boxes and Blu-ray players. It's a lot easier to use than Bit Torrent, doesn't require connecting a PC or DLNA server, and it gives you instant gratification (something that Bit Torrent lacks).

The illegal options have their own pitfalls, and that's something that the article seems to brush aside. And of course, there's always the risk that the producers of the program/movie that you're downloading takes more exception to having their product downloaded for "free." On a P2P network, the IP address is there for all to see, and that's how 20,000 people got rounded up when the producers of The Hurt Locker decided to collect from people who illegally downloaded that particular movie. It's risk that goes along with the reward.