Kevin Spacey urges TV channels to give control to viewers

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I watched House of Cards, it was excellent, as he mentions, I spent like 3 days in a row watching it together, and I found it much more enjoyable than the usual, wait a week til the new episode airs.. I didn't forget characters, their plot lines, relationships, etc. I found it to be much easier to follow.

I also think he has a good point about piracy, give the audience the control and why would they pirate, especially if it's all at an affordable price? This is the future, imo. This is competition in action, pay for the standard, or download it for free. No brainer to the average person. Since production companies can't get around the piracy issue, they're forced to lower their prices, motherfucking Capitalism in action. The companies, like Netflix, that get on board early with this realization are the ones that are going to profit off of it. The ones that fight it are going right under the wheels of the bus.

Season 2 is going to be awesome!

Excellent points...

In essence, the market for "information" (I wonder what George Stigler would think if he were alive to see this) is a vast and amorphous product. It is not homogeneous, but can be packaged as such.
It is not tangible, but it is the foundation of all that we create as humans.

But the internet truly blew open the doors of access. It has been an ugly struggle watching corporate dinosaurs cling to the shreds of their dying business model, but as Spacey implied, it is their fault for not adapting to the changing environment.

And he's equally right that at some point, people WILL "pay for the product" instead of "stealing". I do it now... I like Real News Network, so I toss them $10 a year... a pittance compared to the "information" I suck out of them. Someone creates an interesting documentary on "how to read the sun", I toss them $3... and so on... Apps for my tablet... $2.99 for a PDF editor that I could Pirate (like I had to for my Blackberry Gheybook), but why bother? Considering how useful it is to me...

I think a lot of people don't realize there has been a pirate credo that harkens back to the mid 80s AT LEAST which goes, "If it's worth playing, it's worth paying"... Now perhaps some people don't believe in that, or are completely apathetic to it, but we can see how people in the aggregate will succumb to it at some point even without their conscious awareness of it...

Stigler, George, The Economics of Information, June 1961 "The Journal of Political Economy"

The "Loony store" (or "Dollar Store") consumer is the most representative economic agent of western society that I can think of.