The stupid thing is....
If you can watch it on a screen. you can copy it.
Even if its just a video recorder plugged in where the display card and sound card comes out.
Wholesale piracy, the sort that loses millions, isn't going to be stopped by DRM
But the odd consumer wanting to watch a show later on, will be.
The compact cassette destroyed the music business. I know. I was there. We had a decade of the cheapest most dreadful music there has ever been - punk - simply because no one wanted to invest in albums that would instantly be copied. Then someone had the bright idea of giving the recordings away for free, and charging for live performances instead! Radical!
The problem is the industry wants its cake and to eat it as well., They want to give ready access to people, to make it easy as possible so they can sell movies, rights, advertising space etc. But they dont want to simply give it away as a loss leader.
I buy books now. Why. Because E-books cant be lent, can't be carried with you unless you also buy a particular piece of kit, which is not how I want to read them... I was buying e-books till the DRM got so bad I couldn't even download them without some proprietary kit. I would still be buying e-books. I can afford a few quid for a decent read.
The answer is to have paid services like netflix and accept that at some point someone is going to record off them and swap films with mates.
Just like they do with DVDs.
And go after the major profitable pirating organisations and leave the students alone.
The reality of the medium is that its copyable. Learn to live with it. Copyright is, today, completely unenforceable. That is the lesson the music business had to learn with the demise of the 'studio album' bands.
Find another way to make money.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
