A lot of companies and governments are investing a lot of time and money on limiting / preventing piracy. I believe that despite their efforts there will always be lots of ways to download basically everything from the internet for free.

Also besides downloading, streaming is also becoming more popular. Especially with websites like noobroom.com or popcornered.com where you can stream high quality movies for free.

In my opinion the time and effort spent by companies on limiting / preventing piracy should be invested in continuously coming up with new ways to add value for customers.

I think that the only sustainable paid model is a model like the one spotify uses for music. For those who are unfamiliar with spotify, it basically means that you pay a monthly fee for access to a massive library of media. And just as with spotify, there can be different subscription types and prices for by example streaming full HD content.

What do you think ?

UPDATE 08-10-2012: Spotify isn’t doing that well at the moment apparently: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19355708. I still believe from a customer point of view that this kind of model can work.