[Sethomas]

The conclusion to be drawn is that it should become illegal to not own a DVR.

A few days ago I was talking to someone about how industries vulnerable to digital piracy need to rely on a paradigm shift rather than legislation because of the relative ease of subverting laws. I don't think you can justify piracy as being something other than theft, but at the same time if some studio makes a plotless movie with a $150 million budget that is only watched by people who download it, they should realize they dug their own grave. I think that the music industry still exists because they gave up the ghost on halting mp3 downloads and shifted profit models to favor things like iTunes and live performances. The motion picture industry has proven that similar tactics can be effective: people spent $1 billion to watch Avatar as an "experience", whether in IMAX, 3D, or both. Someone who downloads Avatar to watch it at home just ends up with a tedious "Ferngully: The Last Rainforest" knockoff with a little more profanity and a lot less creativity.

I also wonder how television stays afloat when people no longer are required to endure commercials. JJ Abrams spoke on NPR how this is a "golden age" of television because tv studios have to compete with the internet. They're investing in programs that require a huge effort to get into them. I find shows like Lost and Heroes insufferable because their focus seems to have been to just make the shows addictive rather than creative. It's like how restaurants add certain ingredients to foods that make you crave eating them without actually tasting good. People hated the final episode of Lost because they realized they were duped and the subplots they pondered for months ended up not contributing to the story. What did they expect?