Disney Says Piracy Is A Business Model
Anne Sweeney, the president of the Disney-ABC television group explained that Piracy is a business model. She told that content providers should compete, instead of fight it.
Sweeney spoke these wise words in her keynote address at the Mipcom festival
“We understand now that piracy is a business model, it exists to serve a need in the market for consumers who want TV content on demand. Pirates compete the same way we do – through quality, price and availability.”
She continued:
“This time two years ago, Disney was congratulating themselves at the end of a season that saw lost and Desperate Housewives make it big. But at the end of the meeting, the head of operations and engineering presented a high-quality, ad-free version of DH that had been put online less than 15 minutes after the show aired. That was a defining moment for the business. We we don’t like the model but we realize it’s competitive enough to make it a major competitor going forward.”
Wise words. The keynote is very similar (if not the same) to the one she gave at the Progress & Freedom Foundation’s Aspen Summit in August where Sweeney explained that Piracy was the main cause for Disney’s iTunes move.
Apparently the HD-rip of Desperate Housewives made quite an impression.
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