> I have not pirated any video games for a long while, but installing a video game legally can be quite difficult. I recently bought the Final Fantasy 7 re-rele

> I have not pirated any video games for a long while, but installing a video game legally can be quite difficult. I recently bought the Final Fantasy 7 re-release, which forced me to create an account with square-enix, authenticate my copy online, install securerom, and log into my online account before I could boot it up. Yes, it's also difficult to manually install legally purchased games. Another reason Steam has done so well. > If someone were to make a Steam for TV program, that would be incredible. It's not the interface that's hard, it's getting the content deals. Steve Jobs talked about it during an interview at a conference around a year before he died. They've got the engineering talent to make it happen. What they don't have is deals with the content providers. He called it a "go-to-market problem". The reason Apple was able to force the record labels onto iTunes is because they were getting decimated by music piracy. Particularly after portable media players (PMP) became popular, it was so easy to pirate tons of music and put it on your PMP. Album sales were plummeting and Apple promised to be their savior. The labels didn't realize at that time the kind of control they were ceding to Apple. A decade later, the labels are making a lot less money than they did back in the late 90s. The movie and TV industry isn't nearly as desperate. Not only do people continue to go to the theaters for the bigscreen experience, it's still relatively difficult for the average person to watch pirated content on their TV, because only an HTPC really gives you full access, and those have poor UIs. Also, live content has a special value (mainly news and sports, but also some other shows nowadays, because of real-time or post-show discussion online). Another factor is that movies and TV shows are much larger files than MP3s, and American broadband speeds have largely stagnated in recent years. It takes a lot longer to pirate an HD movie in 2012 than it did to pirate an MP3 in 2001. Finally, the movie/TV industry has seen what easy digital distribution done to the music industry. It's destroyed profits for the bigwigs at the labels. Will the movie/TV studios follow through given that? Doubtful.