[billmalarky]

I'm not trying to make a moral argument one way or the other.

My point is strictly relating to the business end result of the following three alternatives:

1) DO pay for and DO consume digital product.

2) NOT pay for but DO consume digital product.

3) NOT pay for and NOT consume digital product.

Only alternatives #1 and #2 provides a way to monetize the consumer, either via direct monetization of the product (ie pay-per-view) or indirect monetization (ie merchandizing, willingness to pay for new versions of the product in the future, etc), or by leveraging that consumer as a marketing agent to bring in additional consumers (ie that consumer's best friend ended up being monetizable when previously they would have never heard of your media property).

Because there is no expense to the business when a digital product is pirated, then intelligent business management would always prefer option 2 to option 3. That said, business management cannot publicly endorse this preference without the threat of converting #1 consumers into #2 consumers (which are still more valuable than #3 but arguably less than #1).

[BashiBazouk]

The other aspect is which of alternatives #2 and #3 point out through tracked metrics that a business decision may not be working as intended? itunes, Netflix and others have reduced piracy, if this kind of balkanisation of content shows a large uptick in piracy, are they likely to back off of it more so than just reduced viewership?