Netflix could have done it. We all watched as piracy freed people from the nonsense rules of cable and DVDs (inconvenient times, waiting for releases, region lo

Netflix could have done it. We all watched as piracy freed people from the nonsense rules of cable and DVDs (inconvenient times, waiting for releases, region locks to name a few)... And then Netflix solved a lot of those problems for a reasonable price. And then through paying attention to the goldmine of watch data, they did it even better than piracy. We knew that the licensing model would catch people off-guard eventually, but for a time they had actually solved it. Then, they lost the contracts. And media companies saw them as competitors instead of partners. And Netflix brought back region locks (some not their fault, but some that was). And the prices started to go up in chorus with the anti-consumer practices. And now we’re back to the fragmented battleground that was cable TV. And the book industry has somehow stayed just as bad the whole time, in many ways more draconian than Hollywood... Maybe next time the pendulum swings back in favour of the consumers, we’ll end up with better contracts so we can avoid this sort thing as it swings over to producers again.