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« Just encourages piracy..
This is a sub-selection from Vicious circle

ITALIAN926
join:2003-08-16

1 edit

ITALIAN926 to Uncle Paul

Member

to Uncle Paul

Re: Vicious circle

Wow, the "competing with free" concept, mentioned again. Why does this exist? Because right now its a pain to get stolen content to those big ole TV's. Just wait till STB's that stream stolen content to TV's are released. (which should be illegal btw)

Netflix has like 20+ million subscribers. Now what % of them do you think came from previous PAY TV companies, what % do you think came from the moral-free Torrent community?

Id like you to build a lemonade stand next to mine, you charge $10 a cup, and at my stand, Im selling it for the rock-bottom price of $0. See how well you do.

Competing with free, what an intelligent concept.

Camelot One
MVM
join:2001-11-21
Bloomington, IN

1 edit

Camelot One

MVM

Do you by chance work for the MPAA? If not, you should consider applying for a position. Your blatant closed mindedness and unwillingness to even consider that people are willing to purchase what they want, would make you a perfect fit for the current industry.

And since we have 4 full pages of discussion on a topic you started to say shouldn't be discussed, I will now now bow out. My work here is done.

ITALIAN926
join:2003-08-16

ITALIAN926

Member

You dont have to work for the MPAA to follow the rules and laws of this country.

Uncle Paul
join:2003-02-04
USA

Uncle Paul to ITALIAN926

Member

to ITALIAN926
Geez you just don't get it.

There are certain amount of risk, unknowns, and time involved with getting your free product. You have to know where to get the free product (not everyone knows how torrents or newsgroups work). For the non-advanced, there is an increased risk of getting malware or trojans. There are legal ramifications for infringement by downloading or sharing. The media may need to be trans coded to play on your player. The quality of the product is always an unknown.

or

Your mother can pick up many TVs, DVD, Bluray or other devices that will play Netflix. Easily sign up for an account get several options of how to get content (either DVD, BluRay, Streaming or any combination of the three) pricing from $9/month. With that subscription they get an easy to use interface, 0 risk to malware or trojans, 0 infringement liabilities, and a known constant quality with no need to transcode.

So 'free' in this case really isn't 'free' because it comes with 'baggage'. For many many people, this 'baggage' is worth a certain amount money. They would rather pay Netflix a certain rate not to have to deal with the 'baggage' that comes with 'free'. And this is how Netflix is beating 'free' with a paid service (as linked from Sandvine earlier).

The issue is what that price point is for content. At some point the price gets to a point where people are willing to put up with the 'baggage' that comes with 'free'. This has been Karl's point. When the price gets to high, or the technical restrictions become to great, people will no longer be willing to pay for content and go back to getting it from somewhere else.

Now when a STB is widely available that allows Joe User to simply stream torrents directly it will further push the threshold for free vs pay down as it removes some of the 'baggage', but not all. Joe may still be willing to pay to use Netflix just to steer clear of infringement issues. But currently such a STB isn't available.
« Just encourages piracy..
This is a sub-selection from Vicious circle