People often ask me: "If there were no copyright law, how would studios earn money?"
What artists and moviemakers could do is, sell the right to see contents before others. Assuming that DRM is cracked and leaked after some time and will inevitably fall into the "public domain", users would not buy "a song" or "a movie", but the lifestyle of watching it directly out from the factory, while others would have to wait until it's cracked.
When the season 2, 3 and 4 of Arrow aren't available in Europe, we know that Netflix isn't selling the lifestyle of being up-to-date with fashion.
People often ask me: "If there were no copyright law, how would studios earn money?"
They'd work on commission. They'd work on crowd-funded commission. If you want a movie made, you pay for it yourself. If you want to watch a movie that's already been made, why shouldn't that be free? The work has already been done and paid for.
Yes when I want a car I buy one (i.e. pay for it to be made). The OP is suggesting that film studios operate the same model.
Personally I disagree, I don't think the current model is so broken that it can't be fixed. Although some things about it are just plain dumb. The primary part that is almost comical in this case is the bit where content owners refuse to make the extra money that they could so easily make by selling/renting to the millions of people that want to pay them and instead spend a fortune on "public relations" and copyright trolling.
Cars and houses and food are physical goods (and in at least two of your examples, fungible and/or life-sustaining) with distribution costs, intrinsic value, and scarcity.
Netflix seems to spend a fortune in encoding and distributing this type of content. I think that distribution may not always be as simple of a problem and should not be marginalised as such. Especially if you consider the numbers in terms of demand and quality expectations for such services.
Literal thousands of people are distributing various content, for free, right now. Out of sheer altruism most of the time - they get nothing back after their initial download. Pick your favorite torrent site.
The fact that the business landscape wouldn't tolerate this as a legitimate method is a failure of ego and imagination, not something inherent to the system.
You did it in the least effective way possible. Once I pay for a car and my food, I never pay for it again if I don't want to. In fact, I've never paid for my food more than once.
If you have a point, you need to find a better way of making it.
What artists and moviemakers could do is, sell the right to see contents before others. Assuming that DRM is cracked and leaked after some time and will inevitably fall into the "public domain", users would not buy "a song" or "a movie", but the lifestyle of watching it directly out from the factory, while others would have to wait until it's cracked.
When the season 2, 3 and 4 of Arrow aren't available in Europe, we know that Netflix isn't selling the lifestyle of being up-to-date with fashion.