[elohesra]

> It's hardly a fair market when they're forced to compete with free though

Surely, as a member of an entrepreneurial-focussed community, you can trivially see why this argument isn't valid? The content holders are only competing with free if they're offering the same service as the free service.

The games industry has managed to cleverly counter 'competing with free' by making their paid services such as Steam value-added over simply providing the same content as the free content. The rights holders just have to find something that they can add that pirates cannot. As Steam gives community and ease of storage, and Spotify gives recommendations and playlists, so too must Hollywood find something that they can give.

Netflix already goes a long way to being the Spotify of the film and television industry, but it's hampered by only being allowed to show out of date content, and having its content culled fairly often. If the film and television industry were to introduce a Netflix+ with all the newest films and television shows, then I expect that they could attract a much larger number of people at a much larger price.

Of course, they could always just sit around whining that they "can't compete with free" and stick ever greater restrictions on the public until the public finally grow sick of them and force politicians to move decisively against the film and television industry.

[MrScruff]

In the music industry, there are plenty of digital download services that offer convenient and reliable distribution of DRM free audio files. Yet it's commonly accepted that their business is still severely impacted by copyright infringement, ie. competing with free.

Services like Spotify make far smaller revenues than music sales, so can hardly be considered a success for anyone other than Spotify.

I don't disagree that rights holders should make their services as user friendly as possible, but it's disingenuous to infer that will fix the underlying problem.

I'm not sure what you mean by your final paragraph. Why would the public 'force politicians to move decisively against the film and television industry'? The film and television industry are the ones producing the content that the public want.