[nailer]

OK, it sounds as if we're both agreed about piracy being bad.

Re: control of distribution, for large budget films, unfortunately, the people who fund them want to limit the 0-day release to cinemas - as they find it's more profitable, which probably helps pay for all those special effects. Personally I don't mind - it's their movie.

[loewenskind]

Yes, I definitely think it's bad. If we don't find a good way to deal with it (not eliminate, even physical goods sellers haven't achieved that, but bring down to more digestible levels) a lot of markets will eventually shrink drastically.

I can understand wanting to limit early releases while the film is still in the cinema. Fair enough, but personally I think after a suitable amount of time has passed the producers should release the films to digital channels (e.g. iTunes) themselves. I don't think the money distributors cream off the top makes anything better. In my ideal world distributors would be producing the DVD/CD/BlueRay disks for the very small (eventually) group of people who still want to consume that way. In other words, they would be by far the smallest group in the picture, not the biggest.