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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