It's not so much a cultural shift towards "just giving stuff away" as it is a shift toward easy access, ease of use, and portability. The image comparing pirat

It's not so much a cultural shift towards "just giving stuff away" as it is a shift toward easy access, ease of use, and portability. The image comparing pirates vs. paying customers is critical. The technology exists to distribute music and video directly to consumers, with a minimum of hassle. Consider examples like Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, streaming sports packages like NBA League Pass and ESPN360, justin.tv, and atdhe.net. These have various monetization models, but they all share one thing in common: for me as a consumer, they just plain work. Some of them have short ads, but none of them make me sit through long previews or make it difficult for me to watch from my wife's computer. Load up any one of those things and start watching or listening. Then start watching something on a DVD, and notice how much more hassle you have to go through in order to skip previews and such. Or put a DRM-free mp3 file you ripped from CD three computers ago onto your wife's ipod, and compare the experience to fighting with DRM-laden files when you replace your device with a new one. It's not that the industry needs to "just give stuff away". But they need to come up with distribution models that give consumers what they want with a minimum of hassle. Subscription-based streaming services work. Ad-supported streaming works. Paying for non-DRM digital copies works. Trying to install spyware on every PC in the US, sue ISPs, and throttle or filter internet traffic does NOT work, it just further alienates consumers.