[ZipCordManiac]

The movie companies are just shooting themselves in the foot. If I can't find it on Netflix or download a copy for a reasonable price (I'd pay a couple bucks to download a movie and have permanent copy...), I'll torrent it. Their loss.

[MatthewPhillips]

You're not their target customer.

[ZipCordManiac]

I am a HUGE media consumer, trendsetter, and generally on the bleeding edge of entertainment in my group of friends. I am their EXACT target, they just don't know how to market to me. I am the one telling my friends about new movies and tech, making sure they see what is good. I would without a doubt spend much MUCH more money then your average consumer if they made it available at reasonable speeds in a DRM-free format. (xVid, MP4, Mkv) I want to pay, and support the artists, and 'own' the material to move around on my own computers. The studios however won't let me unless I purchase physical content and do the rips myself. So most of the time I only up getting the blu-ray months down the road if it's something special. The only person who 'wins' in this situation is me, and I wish this weren't the case.

[archangel_one]

And over time, they are going to end up with fewer and fewer target customers if they keep this up.

[angrycoder]

People who want to consume media and are willing to pay money for easy access to it aren't their target market?

[MatthewPhillips]

People who are only willing to pay half of the market rate are not their target customer.

[mindcrime]

Maybe what they think of as "market rate" isn't justified by any fundamentals, and will continue to decline as people become more aware of the alternatives? Especially if people find illegal/free downloads via bittorrent to be more convenient than the legally available services.

[mindcrime]

I definitely agree that the content producers are taking a short-sighted POV here. And while another poster argued "you're not their target market," I disagree. It might be mostly geeks and power-users who go to bittorrent at the moment, but if they make their content progressively harder and harder to get hold of (which seems to be the case) I predict more and more people will switch to torrenting the content.

I don't know, maybe the percentage of people who use bittorrent will remain small enough that it won't really affect the studios, but their tactics strike me as self-defeating. I mean, nobody wants to have to jump through hoops to get to the content they want to watch. When torrenting becomes the path of least resistance, it'll be interesting to see what happens.

[runako]

>> make their content progressively harder and harder to get hold of (which seems to be the case) I predict more and more people will switch to torrenting the content.

You have to keep this in the context of the non-tech mass market. For them, the content is on TV now. Turning on the TV is easy. The studios aren't making content harder to get as long as it's available on TV. Netflix/iTunes/torrenting is not easier than turning on the TV (for most people). Most people don't consider turning on the TV to be a difficult hoop to jump through.

Yes, I know that some shows aren't available in some countries. But then, the vast majority of people are likely not even aware of shows that don't air in their markets (i.e. foreign shows).

[mindcrime]

> You have to keep this in the context of the non-tech mass market. For them, the content is on TV now.

Some of it is, yes. If we were talking only about television programming, I'd agree this is mostly true. I mean to be referring to content in a broader sense though, although I might not have made that point explicitly.

> Turning on the TV is easy. The studios aren't making content harder to get as long as it's available on TV.

Right, it's easy to turn on the TV, but is the content you want on? At a time when it's convenient / possible for you to watch? I mean, one reason things like VCRs, Tivo, Netflix, bittorrent, etc. became popular in the first place is because the content wasn't conveniently accessible by simply being in front of the TV at the right time.

> Netflix/iTunes/torrenting is not easier than turning on the TV (for most people).

I don't know... sometimes I think us geeks overstate the difference between "us and them" where "them" are "the unwashed, untechnical masses who are deathly afraid of technology" or whatever. I mean, yeah, there probably are more people who aren't using, say, iTunes, than people who are... but I'm guessing that penetration of this kind of technology is growing and that a larger and larger group of people are starting to care about the kind of convenient access you (can|could|whatever) get from iTunes, Netflix, bittorrent, etc. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's just my perception.

Most people don't consider turning on the TV to be a difficult hoop to jump through.