We live in a world of government-granted monopolies given to companies like HBO. It is not terribly shocking that those monopolies lead to profits, and that companies that fail to take advantage of the copyright system would have trouble.
You are claiming, with no justification, that in the absence of copyright there would be no profit available for people who make entertainment. I am not really sure where you get that idea from. It is not too hard to imagine ways to monetize a TV show in the absence of copyright -- as a simple example, a studio could refuse to broadcast the next installment until enough people have paid.
There, you have a way to make money on TV without copyright. Now can we stop attacking the Internet and start embracing the reality of the 21st century?
>We live in a world of government-granted monopolies given to companies like HBO.
I don't even know how to respond to this... last I checked cable and Satellite companies don't force HBO on you. And while cable companies held a semi-monopoly before Satellites, that market got disrupted like 30 years ago. Let it go.
>You are claiming, with no justification, that in the absence of copyright there would be no profit available for people who make entertainment.
Not completely. I'm claiming there wouldn't be enough profit to support the current proliferation or high budget entertainment options. I highly doubt shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Downtown Abbey, etc. would have gotten the funding they needed through crowdsourcing. You typically need a large studio with deep pockets to take on a project of that size. And most of them rely on ad revenue during broadcast, something that would likely diminish if there was no copyright and any TV studio was allowed to rebroadcast with different ads/no ads. Or if people were allowed to video tape it, copy it w/ no ads, and resell it.
Let's take a look at that simple example of yours. So who pays for the pilot episode to be produced? The T.V. studio? And after they air it then what? Hope enough people liked it to both pay for the production costs and a decent profit as well as fund the next episode? And you think that's a sustainable model??
If systems like you mention would be profitable why aren't there non-copyrighted entertainment options raking in the money right now? The internet has been around for awhile. There's nothing stopping people from releasing high quality non-copyrighted content and making money from it. What's the hold up? Government Monopolies??
"If systems like you mention would be profitable why aren't there non-copyrighted entertainment options raking in the money right now?"
...because they have to compete with studios that enjoy that monopoly that I mentioned above. You seem to have been confused about what that monopoly is; I think you typically call it copyright. Yes, copyright is a special, government-granted monopoly.
You are claiming, with no justification, that in the absence of copyright there would be no profit available for people who make entertainment. I am not really sure where you get that idea from. It is not too hard to imagine ways to monetize a TV show in the absence of copyright -- as a simple example, a studio could refuse to broadcast the next installment until enough people have paid.
There, you have a way to make money on TV without copyright. Now can we stop attacking the Internet and start embracing the reality of the 21st century?