Boxee is gearing up to piss off television networks. Boxee is free software that allows users to watch Internet content on their televisions. The reason this is upsetting to television networks, is because there are free services like “Hulu” or iTunes-which isn’t free, but is very cheap to download an episode. The networks are concerned that people are going to stop watching real time TV, even more than they already are tuning out with Tivo and DVR devices. This will further diminish the ad dollars, and then the networks won’t be able to fund the shows.
So let’s talk about the ethics of all of this. Is this wrong? I don’t think so. Boxee is free now. My guess is that at some point when it becomes a necessity-it will probably start charging for its services. Also, all that this is doing is helping the inevitable switch to digital programming move faster. I think that television networks instead need to figure out how to monetize online content.
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