I would like to say Greg, that in all of your critiques of the current model, you have very few specifics of exactly how a new model would sustain it. 
"I'm sure creative people will find a way to make good content pay for itself - they always have, even before copyright."
There's a lot of this hopeful language in your parts and very few sustainable solutions.  How would financing major feature films work, exactly?  You can poo poo the current version all you want, and there's much to poo poo.  But just like the Nielson's, it's the best option for now that allows most creators and most consumers to walk away happy.

It pretty much boils down to, do you like living in a world where movies like this exist?  Then until a better model can sustain them, please support these movies in the model that exists.

Here I was drafting a reply to theGreg from way back in the thread, and look what's happened in the meantime...  goodness.

Anyway, leaving my intended post aside in order to jump into the thread where it stands now...

This is back to whether buggy-whip manufacturers can make money in the current technological age.

Buggy whips may not be the best analogy here, since the market for buggy whips literally disappeared due to technological changes in society.     However, the market for media is arguably bigger than ever, which is one of the good things about the new digital world we live in.    There are more opportunities and options for content creators than ever before, this is absolutely true.

The "buggy whip" that is in most jeopardy is high-end professional content, which as others have pointed out, only comes from a front-loaded high-priced investment of a lot of time and talent.  Nobody will ever make that investment only to give it away for free and hope they get some donations.    Without a reliable revenue stream to support such a risky undertaking, then yes, that industry will die out.

And thus it may well be that  tv networks and movie studios will eventually go away.  There may be a future where "media" is nothing but garage bands and youtube webcam videos, supported solely by donations because that's all they need to keep making them.   However, since all of us DiF panelists make our livings in the buggy whip industry, you can maybe see why we're not excited about that prospect. 

I'll say this though - at the current state of things, the pay-model is still a far better bet than the donation-model, and the obvious example is Down In Front.    Here at DiF we make content available for free on a weekly basis, and only ask (gently) for donations in return.   Only Teague knows the dollar figures, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess there hasn't been a huge fiscal return on our three years of effort.

And that's fine, none of us does DiF to make money, nor do we expect to.  But you should note that every one of us abandons DiF on any given week if there's a paying job available instead.     Even with its damn-near-nothing production overhead, it costs every single one of us something to make DiF every week.   Even if it's mostly just time and gas money, that's not nothing.

Now I'll go out on a further limb and bet that if we changed to a paid model, we'd lose most of our listeners... and make a lot more money.    If we switched to a ten-dollar-a-month-all-you-can-eat subscription model, and thus immediately reduced our listener base to a total of seventeen people... DiF would be making more money than it does now via unlimited availability and a donation model.

And although you pointed out some cases where donation models are successful, those remain the exception and not the rule.    Most internet "we made a thing, now give us money if you liked it!" models are just like DiF - unprofitable.

Regardless of whether it's buggy whips or cars or Cloud Atlas or strawberry smoothies: if a thing is available for free, it has no value.

We choose to make DiF free because what the hell, we don't care.     But if you insist on removing the value from things that were intended to have it, you are removing the market incentive to make those things.     You may not miss buggy whips, but you might miss (name of favorite tv show or movie) when it stops being worth making.

EDIT:  Posted before I saw Teague's post, to which I will only say, wow. 

Nope, it's the same IDEA.  What is different is the VALUE ADDED to that idea.

THAT is what you are paying for. You're paying for Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens to condense (although apparently not by much) a novel into three movies on page form. Then you're paying for the actors to add something to the roles, you're paying all of New Zealand to add some part of it.

So you get an hourly rate for your work.  Who then, pays the hourly rate for all those people I just listed.

People are still buying her merch.  Her sales haven't dropped at all, and by her own admission it's a tiny, tiny number of people who do it. 

So I ask you again to articulate a defense for her (I already know why I'm against it).  If no one is harmed, if her sales aren't impeded, and if people who admire her work and can't afford one of her products but a cheaper version as well....why should she vigourously prevent people from doing that?

But why should you care that someone is doing that?  Mel still makes a living.  No one is harmed, right?

Let me give you another example, and I'd love to get your opinion on this Greg.  My friend, the supremely awesome Melita Curphy owns a website called missmosnter.com

There, she sells clothing, accessories, dolls, statues, and other art of hers that you can purchase.  This is her profession.  SHe does no other job for a living.  She is one of the busiest people I know.  Part of the reason she is busy is because a good chuck of her time is spent busting people on deviantart, cafe press, and zazzle who take her images off her website, and see merch of it on coffee mugs and shirts. 

Now, under your logic.....all anyone is doing is taking an image that is digital and doing something with it.  So it's ok, right?  If you think not, I'd like to hear why.

Here's the net negative.  If enough people like something enough to want it, but not to contribute to it, then the person or people making it cannot continue to sustainably make anything.  If John goes into the red on this project to the point where he can no longer support himself by doing these projects, then we get no more movies by John Hudgeons.    That may not matter to you.  In fact, I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

Libraries might not be the publishing industry's favorite thing, but you do make a deal with the library that you adhere to, just as they make a deal with whomever supplies the books, which they adhere to.

...

*blink*

Are you trolling?