You know what piracy is killing? Community. If you try and gauge the total number of actual viewers for the show, the number is pretty respectable, if you look at the number who watch it from a monetizable source, the numbers make it look barely viable.
The problem is, Community appeals to a demographic that is the most likely to pirate the show. The Community cast have stories of doing college campus tours where, polling the audience, up to 90% of the people in the room are watching it not from broadcast tv.
Despite regularly being ranked as one of the best comedies currently airing, Community is likely going off the air after at most one more season and the reason why is because NBC simply can't make a profit on it.
I don't care what people pirate or what their reasons are but I think they should be honest and acknowledge the actual effect that piracy has on art rather than make up spurious hypotheticals to salve their conscience.
True, but somewhat misleading, because lawmakers found other ways to effectively ban cars:
"backlash against these large speedy vehicles resulted in the passage of the Locomotive Act (1865), which required self-propelled vehicles on public roads in the United Kingdom to be preceded by a man on foot waving a red flag and blowing a horn"
I don't understand how you can think this is a valid argument against piracy. Community is available on iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, netflix, hulu and NBC.com. Plenty of perfectly legal places to watch it not on broadcast TV. Some of which are even free. In this day and age, that's very similar to asking college students how many of them bought Community Season 1 on VHS.
The problem is, Community appeals to a demographic that is the most likely to pirate the show. The Community cast have stories of doing college campus tours where, polling the audience, up to 90% of the people in the room are watching it not from broadcast tv.
Despite regularly being ranked as one of the best comedies currently airing, Community is likely going off the air after at most one more season and the reason why is because NBC simply can't make a profit on it.
I don't care what people pirate or what their reasons are but I think they should be honest and acknowledge the actual effect that piracy has on art rather than make up spurious hypotheticals to salve their conscience.