I had this post about the film distributors and cinema directors that feared the Video on Demand (VoD) alternative.  Where they wanted to limit the consumers choices about how to watch a movie and force them to the Theaters instead of letting people choose between the different alternatives.

The case was that Triers film “Antichrist” earned more on VoD than through the theaters in the US and it was launched more or less simultaneity on both platforms. You can read my post here.

Their solution was to limit the VoD alternative by releasing the movie later on VoD so they could force as many consumers as possible to the theaters instead.

As it turns out, and this was debated on NRK (the national broadcaster in Norway) today, there is an alternative for consumers that want to watch the movies at home. And this alternative is free…

The alternative is streaming. The debate was on piracy and the increasing use of streaming by consumers. As far as they could monitor there are more than 150 000 Norwegian using streaming sites like Pirate Bay every day. That’s a considerable number when you take into account that the total population of Norway is 4,3 Millions.

The funny thing is this: As it is a violation of the law to upload a movie to a streaming site, it is legal for the consumer to watch a film through streaming (According to Norwegian Law).

It doesn’t take an IT geek to hook up your computer to you TV so you can, legally, stream the movie for free and watch it on your TV. Kinda like VoD, isn’t it…?

Maybe they should reconsider how they think about film distribution and start working on a VoD alternative that everyone would be happy with – distributors, movie theaters and the consumer?