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A comment on How four Microsoft engineers proved that the “darknet” would defeat DRM. Parent comment

Re:How four Microsoft engineers proved that the “darknet” wo... by danielweber on Friday November 30, 2012 @05:21PM (#4855793)
If you really restrict yourself to only a few, you might be better off. But you would be the rare bird. And if people really had to pay $4 for the History Channel for just 30 minutes of Storage Wars a month(is that the right channel?), they would probably skip it.

There is also the loss of option value. (I can flip to MTV if my friends call me up and tell me there's something I need to watch, even though I really did program both my TV and DVR to remove MTV from its listings.)

Also, you are drawing the line at the "channel" boundary, but even a channel is bundling a whole bunch of shows. Someone who watches 1 hour on three channels each is consuming the same amount of TV as someone who watches 3 hours on 1 channel. Cable companies could do per-unit billing, but customers hate that. The vast majority of customers prefer to pay the all-you-can-eat price so they don't have to worry about cost if they leave the TV on or just want to flip down the dial.

Netflix is the ultimate bundling. There are thousands of things there that I have absolutely no intention of watching ever, but that doesn't mean the "fair" price is the 1/1000th of my monthly fee.

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Re:How four Microsoft engineers proved that the “darknet” wo... by illuminate on Saturday December 01, 2012 @01:39PM (#4858534)
"And if people really had to pay $4 for the History Channel for just 30 minutes of Storage Wars a month(is that the right channel?), they would probably skip it. There is also the loss of option value. (I can flip to MTV if my friends call me up and tell me there's something I need to watch, even though I really did program both my TV and DVR to remove MTV from its listings.)"

These are your opinions, though, not a persuasive argument for a person who will never regret not having the option to pay for television they will never watch.

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