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> The whole construction of the network of theaters around the world wasn't designed to have thousands of movies playing at the same time

You're presupposing that the traditional movie theater is an enterprise that has an inalienable right to exist.

It doesn't :-)

Disruptive technology is called "disruptive" for this very reason.

Thanks to cheap big screen TVs and digital distribution, the movie business is being disrupted.

Near me, lots of theaters have gone out of business recently. Other new ones have popped up that are now selling beer and food during the film. Still others are showing fewer blockbusters, but more classics and inviting directors, actors, and other crew to hold QnA sessions after the screenings.

In the short term, damage is done, jobs are lost, businesses fail. In the long term, scar tissue forms and society rebuilds, better than it was before. It's all a bunch of grand experiments. Who knows what will stick?

> capitalism doesn't create monopolies

It most certainly does create monopolies AND oligarchies. Just look at history. Some other reply to me suggested it was government's fault. Yeah that too. Also see history :-)

> For example, it's not a very good idea to have 100 different power companies where you live because it is much more efficient and therefore better for society to have only one company

This is a pretty different discussion.

In terms of ideology, I'd consider myself a social libertarian. I believe that the government should do only really two categories of things:

1) Act as a check/balance on businesses (ie. make sure my food is safe to eat & that no one organization goes around destroying the greater good for personal gains)

2) Provide municipal services where there is either (A) conflict of interest (eg. health insurance) or (B) unsatisfiable constraints to sustain business (eg. no one will deliver mail to a 10 person town; or road construction)

However, the problem is that when technology changes, government needs to be able to rapidly evolve it's involvement in both areas. Sadly, it seems incapable of rethinking any idea without a full reboot (cough bloody revolution) or a fist full of lobbying dollars.

For example: Today, I support the government's control of road construction. If teleporters are invented tomorrow, I would demand that the government immediately develop a plan for reducing and ultimately eliminating their involvement in transportation.

If it's more efficient, how come they are complaining so much about how they're struggling to make money? P2p is way more efficient than what they want (build+power+staff theatres, rental stores, retail stores, manage supply chains, etc.)

The Internet wins and will always win.

It isn't about efficiency. It's about giving stuff away for free versus charging for it.

As one guy above put it, if you lay out a bunch of hotdogs on a table and let people take them for free, you'll give out a whole lot more than the guy next to you who is charging for them and handing them out one by one.

Youtube and vimeo probably weren't originally designed as "distribution systems for the little guy", so much as "I want to share this cat video/student film". The point being that they weren't meant to be a distribution system any more than a DVD in and of itself is a distribution system. They're a type of media which makes the work of distribution systems easier. Blogs were, at the time, the distribution system, and youtube/vimeo were a new, easy to use media that made distributing to a wide audience easier (no more 'codec' issues, etc.)

The fact that they have become distribution systems in their own right is a testament to the fact that content creators will always create, and will try to distribute their creations in any way that they can. People will often use something counter to it's original design, and it's smart companies that can recognise that use and restructure their operation around it.

The problem isn't that only the big guys get into the cinemas - in a free market, that might still be the case. The problem is that the little guys can't get into the cinemas, no matter how high the quality of their product. The only way that they can is by bowing down and paying fealty to the big studios who didn't actually contribute anything to the production.

The problem that the big companies are encountering now is that new media has been showing up which works without their tightly controlled distribution methods. Want to make a TV series? You no longer have to sell it to a studio or be stuck on some form of local station. You can distribute it yourself, to more people than the traditional methods would ever allow, and you can do it easier. The problem that the studios have is that you no longer need to be on a TV show or in a cinema to get seen. They're not entirely irrelevant yet, but they're no longer the only way to view content.

The problem with piracy is that people are taking the job of distribution out of the hands of the people who either created or paid for the rights to distribute it. It's a big blow for companies that add no real value other than distribution, which is why they're claiming massive losses and jobs lost. They can't reconcile the idea that you can make as much money (if not more) by selling the same product at a lower cost to a wider audience. The pirates saw an opportunity and stepped in. Once the big companies can figure out how to adapt their business models to meet what consumers actually want, they'll start to make a profit, and everyone will be all the better for it.

The last thing that this opening of the market (and that's what this internet revolution is) means is that quality will increase. Once distribution isn't a case of "You get what you're given, and you'll thank us for it", then the producers of content will have to start competing not in price but in quality for the consumer's dollar. People can pick what they want to watch when, now. They don't have to catch it at the cinema or have to go without until it makes it to DVD. To make them want to watch something at the cinema, then the product actually has to be worth watching at a cinema. If you want someone to pay money for your DVD box set, you have to make it worth spending money on. If there's something getting produced which you can get for cheaper, in a way that's more convenient to you, then the content would have to be amazing to get you to pay for the more expensive option.

Anyway, this has been a long, rambly rant. I'm hoping that I didn't cloud issues too much, or tangent too often, or outright contradict myself. Every word I wrote, I meant at the time I was writing it.