Here's what I don't understand. I pay Netflix $8/month to stream movies and TV shows in HD. From that $8 Netflix has to pay their hosting expenses, maintain a profit margin, and pay licensing fees to Hollywood.
Now a technology comes along that in several ways delivers a better service than Netflix to consumers, for absolutely no cost to Hollywood. Is there any reason Hollywood shouldn't just release content to torrents, and sell an unlimited license for $8, $16, $24, or ?? a month to consumers living in countries which respect intellectual property?
I would gladly pay some amount of money to the content creators if it would buy me Popcorn-time service in a legal manner. I would say the vast majority of Americans are in this boat. They want the service that Popcorn Time used to provide, and they'll pay a price for it. It makes absolutely no sense to me that Hollywood hasn't figured out how to make an absolute killing off of this free infrastructure by merely selling legal amnesty in the form of bittorrent-streaming licenses.
'Hollywood' isn't a single entity. Someone would need to:
- Set this monthly fee
- Work out a way to share the fee among content creators, and get that agreed by those content creators
- Get the data required to support the fee-sharing agreement (e.g. movie plays)
- Protect the revenues through, e.g. legal action against those who use the service without paying, and providing a payment mechanism for everyone else
Think about it from the point of view of an individual content creator. If I were to create the best movie ever, and wanted to maximise my revenue from the money/sweat/risk I put in to get this far, what kind of revenue sharing model would need to exist, in order to persuade me to make the movie available on a service like the one you describe?
Now a technology comes along that in several ways delivers a better service than Netflix to consumers, for absolutely no cost to Hollywood. Is there any reason Hollywood shouldn't just release content to torrents, and sell an unlimited license for $8, $16, $24, or ?? a month to consumers living in countries which respect intellectual property?
I would gladly pay some amount of money to the content creators if it would buy me Popcorn-time service in a legal manner. I would say the vast majority of Americans are in this boat. They want the service that Popcorn Time used to provide, and they'll pay a price for it. It makes absolutely no sense to me that Hollywood hasn't figured out how to make an absolute killing off of this free infrastructure by merely selling legal amnesty in the form of bittorrent-streaming licenses.