Disney-ABC: "We understand piracy now as a business model"

Filed in archive Business Trends on October 12, 2006

The real reason video piracy exists arises from lack of legitimate options that work for the consumer.

Recently, I wrote about Bob Wright of NBC Universal and how he detests the idea of piracy so much that he seriously equated it in severity to Al Qaeda style terrorism. I concluded with the line "stop linking piracy to terrorism, and maybe you might come up with ways to take advantage of this trend and increase sales for yourself."


Now comes news from Disney-ABC that content producers have had a revelation: instead of simply trying to squash piracy, it might be more productive to understand and compete with it. At least, that's what I read at ars technica. The quote I liked the most was said by Anne Sweeney, the president of Disney-ABC Television Group.

"So we understand piracy now as a business model. It exists to serve a need in the marketplace specifically for consumers who want TV content on demand and it competes for consumers the same way we do, through high-quality, price and availability and we don't like the model. But we realize it's effective enough to make piracy a key competitor going forward. And we've created a strategy to address this threat with attractive, easy to use ways to for viewers to get the content they want from us legally; in other words, keeping honest people honest."

When you start thinking this way, the goal becomes offering a more compelling product than file-swapping networks can provide, rather that attempting to sue the users who like your content. For ABC, this has meant launching their own streaming media player and providing shows like Lost and Desperate Housewives online only minutes after they air.

Bob, are you noticing something here?