Netflix Gains Exclusive Rights to Dreamworks Animation Titles

[Woochifer]

You're missing the point. He never recommends illegal downloading. His point is that the industry should be trying to come up with a unified model that makes it as easy for the legit user to access content as it is for the illegal user. I have never downloaded an illegal movie and never will. Pirates are not going to pay for it and never will. They should stop treating me like a pirate and focus on moving the product.

Maybe recommend wasn't the right word. But, I still disagree with his point that illegal downloads represent the easiest or most convenient option for most people, simply because P2P downloads require a PC.

Since most TVs are not attached to PCs, this requires the extra step of offloading the file or otherwise configuring a networked set-top box to play the media file. And IMO, the big drawback with illegal downloads is the lag time. Average broadband speeds in the US is somewhere around 3 Mbps, which necessitates somewhere around a 1 hour wait to download a DVD-quality movie file.

Again, his observation is "The easiest and most convenient way to see the movies or TV shows you want is to get them illegally." His point is that it should be reversed so that the easiest way to get what you want is to get it legally. It is the industry that needs to develop the model to accomplish that.

Unfortunately, the direction of the industry is looking more like a fragmented array of providers for different content. At the rate that content costs have escalated, it will soon be infeasible for any single provider to profitably support content from every major studio. Netflix is obviously preparing for this by producing their own content (they've already funded some indie films and begun developing their own TV series). But, no way can they keep going in this direction without fee hikes for subscribers.

That was my point about LPs and Cassettes. Its all about access to the music you want the way you want it. Why shouldn't the techies be entitled to have it all in one place whenever and wherever? If that is what they want then sell it to them. If you're not selling anything, don't blame the customer. Find a better way to sell it. And you're right about Netflix. And that is why Hollywood should not be resisting Netflix the way the Beatles resisted iTunes.

The attitude of entitlement that I often see is that they want it wherever and whenever without paying anything for it. For example, Apple announced their iTunes Match service as part of iCloud, which provides online storage for music files. Yet, the refrain that I read over and over from a lot of techies was that no way they're going to pay anybody for anything having to do with "their" music, even if that service also essentially legalizes their entire music collection and upgrades all of their files to 256k AAC for less than the cost of two CDs.

I don't think that Hollywood is resisting Netflix, so much as they want to play Netflix against all of its streaming competitors to maximize revenue. They will wholeheartedly embrace streaming when someone shows them a revenue model that can replace what they get right now with theatrical and home video releases. We're not at that point yet, that's why Netflix and all the other streaming services are encumbered.