I'm not saying Fox is being greedy. I didn't argue that they shouldn't charge me anything. I didn't argue that I should get anything for free.
I argued that I'm already paying them at least once with cold hard cash for that content, twice if you want to count Hulu Plus, where until last year, they also distributed the content. Three times, if you want to count my Netflix subscription.
Despite all of this, I cannot get last week's episode from them through any device I use where I actually have paid them cash.
But if I want to open my laptop, they'll give me or anyone who has paid nothing the episode for free -- and if I want to hook my laptop up to my TV, then it's on my TV.
That's the argument: despite paying them, I'm getting less than if I paid them nothing at all. That's a broken business model, to me.
They "gain" only two things by doing this. One, it's less convenient to stream from my laptop to my TV, so potentially I will prefer to buy some type of cable or satellite TV subscription. But I already have that.
Two, they potentially prevent me from abandoning cable or satellite TV -- cutting the cord -- and going with all web streaming. But that's a false assumption. If anything, they're encouraging me to cut the cord more. That's because with Netflix and their own web site, I'm getting better service than if I didn't have DirecTV at all.
