THE FUTURE OF VIDEO PIRACY ON THE INTERNET

---

Every time a new consumer technology appears, the movie studios proclaim that it will kill off their business. When television sets first arrived, the movie studios worried that free television shows would stop people from going to movie theaters, but television wound up creating another market for movies. When VCRs and video rental stores appeared, the movie studios once again feared that nobody would go to movie theaters, but video rentals wound up creating another market for movies. Now that file sharing networks have arrived, the movie studios have started screaming that nobody will drive to the movie theaters. We’ll know in a few years whether the movie industry’s fears have finally come true or whether the Internet will provide yet another source of revenue for the studios.

---