The law, of course, doesn’t work on feelings. So technically speaking, if I did download that movie for my own use, even if I deleted it after viewing, I’m performing an illegal activity. There are two ways of combating this problem:

One, you can follow the lead of the music industry and punish the end user. This is a singularly stupid option. It’s bad PR, even if you do have the law on your side, and big corporations in today’s world don’t need bad PR. I don’t care if you believe all the anti-business folks in the world should be dropped off a cliff with a rock tied to their feet, bad PR is bad PR. There’s also the fact that punishing the end user doesn’t stop the problem: the guy who put that music up in the first place is still going to do it.

End result? You’ve got a whole bunch of people mad at you (especially if it's a campus initiative and some college kid takes home a bill in the thousands for something that "everybody is doing") and nothing’s been solved. The music industry? Slowly catching on as they fix their beady eyes on those who they consider egregious offenders, like the movie industry is targeting people like aXXo.

The second option is what a number of TV networks have been trying out: the join ‘em if you can’t beat ‘em method. This idea has possibilities but the networks need to start hiring people clued in to the online scene if they want it to work.

First of all, they need to understand that the days of traditional TV are winding down. I’m sorry, you guys, but we just aren’t the captive audience we used to be in your Grandpa’s time. That little machine in our living room isn't half the novelty it used to be, no matter what space age material it's made of. That said, while some people are deliberately getting off the television bandwagon and prefer to spend their times with bigger and better computers, the majority of people still spend time on their couch with their big screen providing background noise.

Maybe that too will change in time but it’s still a few years away from becoming commonplace. In the meantime TV needs to stop hemming and hawing over whether putting their shows online would “cannibalize” their audience. They still have a chance to get a corner of this market because unlike movies or music, TV piracy is just on the rise.

And if TV wants to seriously compete with BitTorrent sites that offer free downloads and Youtube then it has to look beyond live streaming and iTunes.