eg, Fox will let you watch their content on Hulu 8 days after broadcast. But you don't want to wait 8 days, so you go pirate it. Fox makes no money.
If you'd waited the 8 days, Fox would show it to you via Hulu, and show you some ads, and they and Hulu would have made some money.
But, by your logic, purchasing any non-expiring stored media, such as a DVD, would deprive "the content creator (well, a distributor) the chance to make money from you consuming the content at some point in the future."
...if Fox gets a cut of the Hulu subscription cost regardless of whether that individual watches any Fox content during the subscription period or not.
> But, by your logic, purchasing any non-expiring stored media, such as a DVD, would deprive "the content creator (well, a distributor) the chance to make money from you consuming the content at some point in the future."
Yes. But they've made your money off your consumption of that content at some point in time.
The distributor is a very important part of the creation process at the moment.