To the Piracy Victims: The Motion Picture Industry

I hear you've been losing too much money to online piracy, and would like the Government to control the only true medium of human expression to exist in the history of humanity a little tighter so you can have a few more dollars. Taking that as truth, I've decided to give you other ways that don't impede the internet revolution with this advice:   ADAPT OR DIE

1. Be my personal assistant.

I'm not positive how well I fit into your target demographic, but I know I have two traits you like: I like movies AND I don't mind paying to see them. That's right, I don't feel the need to steal from you. In fact, I wish I gave you money more often but I tend to forget.

I see a preview for a movie and decide I want to see it. Then I forget. I might not think the movie is worthy of the expense of seeing it in a theater, but I still want to see it and don't mind paying to see it. If you could fill the role of being my personal assistant with regard to your products and remind me when the ones I want to see become available, you'll get more of my money.

Why is it I can't hold up my phone while viewing a movie trailer and scan the QR code that displays in the bottom right corner during the course of the entire trailer?

 - why doesn't scanning that code add the movie to a 'notify of viewing availability' list on a website your industry sponsors (as I'm not interested at registering at separate sites for every studio).

- why is it that when I'm trying to decide what movie I want to watch, I can't go and see a list of movies that I've scanned to indicate I want to see?

2. Stop being control freaks.

Do you have ANY idea how ridiculously frustrating windows of availability are? All of us know there is nothing physically limiting you from making your products available on all mediums at the same time. We understand that back in the VHS days, it made sense to force us to go to the theater to see it first - then watch it through cable next - then be able to own it on video. Those days are gone though.

We know that you're lucky we're paying to watch your movie at all, quit making us wait for no reason. Your backwoods distribution policy is the catalyst for the piracy problems. Some things you should realize:

Not all movies are theater worthy. Get a computer guy to write a program that can make the call of whether one is or not, and don't send the rest to theaters. Make straight-to-DVD/stream not a derogatory concept.