> Microsoft and Adobe seem to have realized this, and now they're making things accessible to most people, so many ex-pirates used to their products are buying

> Microsoft and Adobe seem to have realized this, and now they're making things accessible to most people, so many ex-pirates used to their products are buying them. Not so for the media companies. Why does Netflix USA/UK/etc have different content? Why do games have region locks and ridiculous DRM? The thing here seems to be ease of access. Adobe products were at one point more easily gotten in pirated fashion than legitimate. The same was even true for MS products. Once both companies adopted new distribution models, the pirated software was no longer the easiest option. Additionally, while costly to some, the ease of upgrades and getting patches became easier by using the legitimate channel. This is important for professionals. The media companies appear to recognize this at this point, but they fear losing control of the distribution model. They don’t want to cede that all to Netflix, but this seems like it might be a losing option for all but the biggest media companies (like Disney). It will be interesting to see how this all plays out, since most people are not going to want to purchase single media channels, and will generally want a single source like Netflix. Until this becomes simpler for consumers, pirating for some is the simplest means of getting access to the content.