[blagie]

The cycle has been:

Piracy -> Friendly ways to buy -> Unfriendly ways to buy -> Piracy -> ...

Unfortunately, giving money back to writers involves hopping through piracy. At that point, a new, consumer-friendly service will sprout up. Everyone will use it.

Over time, the service will want to profit-maximize, and will adopt anti-consumer techniques. Leading people to go to Pirate Bay. Leading to friendly services.

Rinse, repeat.

[lotsofpulp]

How many times has this happened, such that it can be called a cycle?

There are other possibilities, such as people simply not writing as much anymore, or higher quality writers existing the market due to lack of sufficient return.

[blagie]

Bad DRM led to Napster led to Netflix lead to a fragmentation of services led to a resurgence of piracy.

Similar thing happened with music, only rather than piracy, it landed on legal / free (e.g. Youtube). Youtube is just starting to do the consumer-unfriendly thing (but it's got a long ways to go before piracy comes out competitive).

Similar in books.

I'll mention: A lot of these are consumer-unfriendly in some ways (e.g. Netflix DRM), but friendly in others. $20/month for all the movies you can watch beats piracy.

[al_borland]

It’s happened to some degree with music, movies, and TV shows.