I think that content will naturally go to the internet and content providers will find opportunities there to make profit, so I see no societal benefit from infringing on their freedoms to try to accelerate the process.

Here’s an idea: How about the music producers finally realize they aren’t required to be middle-men anymore and just go the hell away?

It’s the 21st century. Time to start accepting it.

The concept of the second point is primarily to ban region-locking concepts.

A TV broadcast is already in grey territory as nothing currently forbids me to record the show and pass it to a friend. But, making it available to the Internet at large would probably put me in trouble. On the other hand, if the show has value, today, you can be sure someone will pirate it and make it available. If the content owner does not put the show for download with a fee, he loses revenues he could get otherwise. It does not make economic sense in the first place to not make the show available for download.

If the show is only offered in the UK and people find it has value, you can today be assured that pirates will also make it available for download by people in other countries. Content owners lose again.

A concept behind the law is to promote new business models where content owners make more money and the country also benefits from these revenues. It’s a way to protect content owners against their stupidity.

As a compromise, I might be ready to offer a delay of a day or two before the show is made available for download to at least give time to content owners to package the content.

As for the freedoms of the content owners, they are already free to make it available today only on TV. The end result is the same: if it is any good, they will lose revenues from pirating. It does not make any economic sense to try to go after pirates when you already have a solution to generate more revenue. So, the law would help the industry stop wasting money going after money you can hardly get back (through lawsuits) and favour going after more revenues for the content.

If a country was to implement such a law, we would surely see some disruptions. The distribution costs would be much lower and there would be more loyalties available for everyone involved in a production. On the other hand, consumers would win with easy access to content through legal means. Remaining pirates would also have fewer incentives to make content available for download, since it is already readily available. This might make them less likable and acceptable at the same time.

I think these approaches go against the freedom of the content owners.

If we want to encourage content owners to publish in new ways we should do so through incentives rather than coercion.

I think that content will naturally go to the internet and content providers will find opportunities there to make profit, so I see no societal benefit from infringing on their freedoms to try to accelerate the process.