For example, before Hulu what was really happening with 90% of the shows on there? Thinks like McGuyver were only thriving (if you can call it that), in DVD sales. Now I tend to go back and watch things that haven’t been on TV for years.

Another good example is the Alfred Hitchcock Hour. I’ve been watching that constantly on Hulu. How were creators monetizing that before? How were they introducing the writing and suspense of Hitchcock to new viewers? Answer is that they really weren’t. So essentially now that show will be on for another 50 years or more of “reruns”, just in streaming format with new paying advertisements.

I’d say you better find a way to change the monetization model on TV very quickly to adapt. I know many people now who are dropping TV all together for Hulu/Netflix. I know that’s how I watch 90% of my shows, or Over the Air HD. I don’t pay for cable, it’s ridiculously expensive, and I haven’t for almost 3 years now. But I would pay for 5-10 stations of my choosing, and the Al-La-Carte model with an unlimited DVR feature would be exactly what would motivate me to come back to cable to pay for TV again.

Your argument ignores practical economic relationships.

Markus’s basic argument is that the supply of NFL players and entertainment talent (writers, actors, etc.) is, in economic terms, highly inelastic. That is, in practice, at current compensation levels, the reduction in supply of players/talent would be negligible, absent very, very large reductions in compensation.

There are certainly strong qualitative reasons to believe this could be true: in both areas, many people are likely to be motivated less by money than by fame, prestige and love of the profession. What’s more, in both professions, likely competing employment options typically pay far, far less.

And certainly in the case of the NFL, there is strong empirical evidence to support his conclusion: namely, the fact that the NFL has negotiated a salary cap. This demonstrates the inelasticity of the chain of consumer (fan) interest/demand -> quality of play -> supply of talent -> player salaries.

That is, if changes in player salaries translated to a significant change in the supply of talent, that caused a significant change in the quality of play, that caused a significant change in consumer demand, the NFL would be motivated to pay higher salaries, rather than to cap them. It’s only because this chain is highly inelastic that the NFL has a motivation to impose a cap.

Or to explain it differently, high NFL player salaries aren’t driven by competing with other professions to attract talent to the NFL. They are driven by competition among the teams for specific players, predominantly at the top. Teams can agree to compete against each other at lower salary levels only because it doesn’t significantly affect the size of the talent pool, or the ultimate quality of play.

Markus’s argument is that the same is essentially true of the talent pool for entertainment: salaries could be reduced significantly without significantly impacting the talent pool, the quality of the work, or consumer’s enjoyment of such. I expect most people would conceptually agree this is at least plausible. There may or may not be data out there to prove or disprove the contention, but a theoretical argument that quality must decline by some (possibly negligible) delta certainly doesn’t disprove it.

Your claim that actors or NFL stars couldn’t/wouldn’t work for less if the overall film/NFL economy were to drop is completely untrue.

Surely, if the average NFL salary dropped from $770,000 to $693,000, there are some people who would choose not to enter the NFL and instead take on some other career – perhaps professional basketball or baseball, perhaps coaching college football, perhaps being an oil-well firefighter. Even if it’s just a few of the 1000 or so players, the moment this happens, overall quality suffers.

Now there’s no way to prove the direct effect of a small drop in salaries, but this is as fundamental as microeconomics gets.

But of course. That is why your orginal examples consisted of a show you explicitly claimed expensive for its quality writing and acting (something those poor Brits with their lower budgets apparently can’t afford) and a straight-forward remake of a British production (something those poor Brits with their lower budgets… hey, wait a second!).

You know, you could have just right at the beginning that you’re unwilling to discuss the merits of your argument.

And the TV On Demand is for a limited number of shows, not everything that’s been shown, and all with a time stamp, where the company offering the service has made some payment for those shows, which is then passed on to the subscriber.

All of these methods allow money to be properly allocated to the content’s rights holders.

True, but as I mentioned vaguely, all of the other main uk commercial stations have similar services of one form or another:

http://www.itv.com/catchup/ http://www.channel4.com/4od/index.html http://demand.five.tv/Home.aspx

Also there are demand services like:

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/websales/service.do?id=1 http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skycom/skyproducts/skytv/skyplus http://www.topuptv.com/

Some of which are admittedly closer to Tivo, but still offer very comprehensive tv on demand services. Hope that’s of interest.

The issue that is being presented to the Supreme Court for review is fairly narrow: is Cablevision liable for direct infringement of the copyrights. A bit of legal background: you can infringe a copyright both directly or indirectly. Direct infringement is designed to hold infringers liable for their own acts — ie, for the unlicensed copy you made. Contributory infringement is designed to hold infringers liable for the direct infringement of others, which they contributed to or induced.

The facts of the Cablevision case — and both Supreme Court cases and lower court cases are limited to the facts of the case at hand — is pretty squarely a contributory infringement case. The appeals court opinion makes clear that Cablevision’s servers only copy a program at the direction of the user; an individual copy is maintained for each user; and, that copy can only be watched by that user. (which is the opposite of John’s 30 Rock scenerio). If the user has a fair use right to make such a copy, then Cablevision is not liable for copyright infringement (because no one has directly infringed the copyright). If the user does not, then Cablevision likely contributes to their direct infringement by providing the RS-DVR service.

What Cablevision is doing is no different than what TIVO is doing. They are merely facilitating the user in making a permissible copy for later viewing. The real trouble is in allowing the user to maintain that copy indefintely and that should be the center of the debate. Is it still “time-shifting” if you keep the copy after you watch it — probably not. That is where the companies should be directing their energy: and not just at Cablevision, but TIVO, DVRs, etc.

How is this different than HBO’s On Demand service where they allow their movies and series to be seen at any time after their initial broadcast? I watched the whole season 5 of The Wire in one weekend thanks to this service. It is a time limited service though with expiration dates on the shows.