Sure, but the creators also don’t receive any compensation from you. It’s like jumping the turnstile at a subway station, figuring that because you bought NewBalance sneakers you're already paying the government for providing public transport.

That said, if I could pay, say $100 a month for ‘all you can eat’ pirating (providing that money would go to the studios and artists) I’d love to.

User experience counts. You'd thought companies like Apple and Google had taught us that by now.

Of course, the BBC gets it funding from a licence fee, so it kinda doesn't matter (I pay the licence fee there for I have already paid up, so what does it matter how I see it?) apart from the fact that the BBC cant include a non BBC download in its figures.

I think that to be honest the experience point is a red herring. Its really about it being free. My position here is that in show or movie advertising, or product placement, is the best way to go. That way we get the show for free, and the producers get their advertising money.

If I in the UK was able to go to, say, HBO in the US and download a show for free, I would. Even if that meant a special international free version that was non HD and contained adverts in the middle, or even product placement. But I cant, so I would go for other sources.

This will only settle down when they release shows for free at the point of watching, and find other ways to make their money.

Capitalists: this is supply and demand. Its very basic and the fact that so many huge businesses and politicians seem to have forgotten the most basic law of economics is frankly contemptible and offensive to any one with half a function brain. Worse still is the government interference that seems to want to use law to criminalise citizens who are obeying the laws of supply and demand, while offering a protection racket to the very organisation who should be primarily guided by it, but chose to ignore it. This, IMHO, is a vile and disgusting abuse of law, society and government. Its up to the business to adapt, not have their old control freak behaviour endorsed and protected by government, who's election funding depends on such organisations.

And BTW, this betrays the biggest flaw in US democracy, which has become little more than those with money get to buy the government and dictate legislation. The military industrial lot paid for Bush and we get war. The media pay for Obama and we get draconian protection rackets.

Oppps, again, longer than I intended......

Going back to OP’s post: just because I pay for cable (which I hardly watch) doesn’t give me a pass to download freely. Netflix is a good alternative, but it’s unfortunately not available where I live. My only legal option to get the TV shows I want to watch is iTunes (which is fine, but it doesn’t have everything, and sometimes you have to wait.)

It is absolutely jumping the turnstile. No doubt about it. I have no legal or moral justification for this other than it is achieving a really high quality experience that you can't get any other way.

No one would claim the subway operators should be providing sneakers, or that people would pay for sneakers from the subway operators.

* You don't have to wait 5 minutes to watch the show, it starts playing instantly.

* You don't have to worry about storage or codecs.

* If you don't know what to watch, netflix can help with that.

* If you are on a train or bus, generally you can get netflix and watch movies on your phone. I do this quite regularly.

This isn't to say there aren't serious advantages to piracy or legal downloading (it doesn't work on linux), there are. Steaming can be a disaster if the internet is having a bad hair day. It depends on circumstance and goals. I invested in netflix the day I saw someone unwilling to wait for a show to download and use netflix instead.

Steam combines the best of both worlds. I just wish they would add a DRM free at 365 days from launch feature + price drops to 5 dollars.

And their interface is ugly and near unusable. It's a testament to the value of the service that people love it despite its disorganized interface, just because they can easily watch about 30% of the content they really want.

The solution, for me, is to integrate movies and series into Steam. When it airs, it becomes downloadable through Steam. I probably can start watching about 5 minutes after everyone else, only instead of adverts I pay ~$1-2 for the episode.

If I want to keep it on my hard drive, I can. If I want to dump it, I know I can re download at any time. It offers the exact freedoms and ease I get from torrents, but without needing to be a pirate.

The key thing, though, is the delay. I won't wait 2 months after the series ended to be able to buy it, because I don't want to and I don't have to. Compete on speed and ease of use, and price becomes less of an issue.

In my case I can't pay either producer or provider to see the same content my brother saw last night so it's a moot point. He's my brother and I'm going to do whatever it takes to be able to start a conversation with him.

The music industry is finally starting to get it, even if they are being dragged kicking and screaming by Rdio, Spotify, iTunes, etc. But still, these are all great services that are giving customers what they want when they want it. I just hope people like Netflix, Hulu and now Vdio will do the same thing for movie and TV content.

It's really sad. So shortsighted. The first company to do this right will bring media into the future and revolutionize the industry. The profits to be had are insane, and they're going down the drain.

I won't be available for everyone and for a fair price. So piracy will still exist.

Where "fair price" is an amount that's so low as to be effectively free or at most substantially lower than it costs content creators to produce it.

If they do it right, people will pay for it. People will want it to an irrational degree.

But they probably won't do it right.