Streaming Bullshit, a Rant

From an article in today's NYT called "Digital Pirates Winning Battle With Studios":

“Streaming has gotten efficient and cheap enough and it gives users more control than downloads do. This is where piracy is headed,” said James L. McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research. “Consumers are under the impression that everything they want to watch should be easily streamable.” [emphasis added]

This points to one of the most infuriating aspects of the whole online "piracy" issue. We live in a society that, in certain sectors, elevates capitalism and the "free market" to the level of divinity, and all compassion, virtue, humility, morality, common sense, intelligence and even life itself is to be sacrificed, as the ancients would spill the guts and blood of goats and sheep on the marble temple mount, to this fearsome godhead - let us consider finance or the oil industry or pharmaceuticals - whereas, in other sectors, we believe in crushing into dust any emerging market that threatens the present business model, no matter how dead that model may be. I'm talking about you, Hollywood - which today means a handful of giant international conglomerates.

Is it possible, has any of these brilliant analysts even stopped for a second to consider, that if "consumers are under the impression that everything they want to watch should be easily streamable," that consumers might be right? As far as the MSM is concerned, the only people who would put forth this argument are wild-eyed, long-haired, dirty-hippie anarchist pirates - a word that is used to make ordinary college students sound as dangerous and criminal as those crazy motherfuckers in Somalia who hijacked that oil tanker a couple months ago.

Do you think college students are as dangerous as those crazy motherfuckers in Somalia who hijacked that oil tanker a couple months ago?

Just as suing Napster, P2P software companies and, eventually, music fans themselves did absolutely nothing to help the music industry (1) stop music file-sharing or (2) save its business model or (3) not look like miserable cunts, so will trying to stop "piracy" completely and totally fail to save Hollywood's old business model. Yes, the stakes are THAT low - this is just about a freaking business model!

Capitalism is, by fucking definition, about rooting out and CAPITALIZING ON emerging markets; once a business model fails, a company that clings to it is doomed to fail, too! Didn't you pricks go to business school? Sorry, I mean, didn't you pricks go to elementary school?

But what's much worse is the way the MSM is telling only the studios' version of the story. It makes sense, of course - it's the same industry. That doesn't mean it's not a disgrace.