I think the industry is chasing their tail. The market is shifting just like it shifted for the camera/film industry. The shift is from hardware to services. Same thing has happened to some extent in the computer business. They can either hang on to their old thinking and ride the horse to the grave, or get innovative and use their market position and brands to dominate the new space. Protectionist thinking generally loses out over innovation and creative thinking.

As an example, lets say you are Kodak and you are getting killed by internet based companies that are converting your film processing customers to digital upload/mailed back prints. What do you do? You could fight it by saying they violated some patent that you had (don't know if that's true... just guessing). Or, you could be innovative. You have computerized film processing equipment in all the drug stores and grocery stores in the US. So, you network them together and beat the guys at their own game. Now you allow people to upload their images... but rather than mail them back to them... you let them drive to the local drug store and pick them up locally in an hour. You then leverage the Kodak brand and you would shut the little guys out if your price is competitive.

Same kind of thinking is possible with film. They just need to get creative. DVDs cost much less to produce than tapes, but yet they charge more to the consumer. This causes people to want to copy them. Either drive the cost down through volume so that its not worth making copies, or you go to some other delivery model that is more convenient or provides some value that you would lose by simply making a copy.

Back to your original point... I think that if you buy something for your use, you should be able to use it on different mediums. They either allow a way to do it, or people will figure it out.

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Mike - Been Converged?