Anymore, more and more people are watching television shows on their computer instead of watching live on cable. Viewing on a computer provides the viewer with a higher resolution image and lets them view their shows whenever they want. The notion of watching television shows online began when people began torrenting shows and more recently major Television studios like CBS, NBC and ABC provide a stream of shows the day after they are broadcasted on TV.

Third-party sites as began appearing like Hulu that let you to watch shows when you want online in a flash player. The studios make money off of them by inserting brief 30 second ads in the video and making money that way. The other model is selling episode like Amazon Unbox and iTunes and sell them either by the episode or by the season and allow the customer to download and watch them anywhere. Both models have their advantages and disadvantages: the stream model is free but, you have to sit through ads, need to be connected to the Internet and shows are usually only available for a limited amount of time. Meanwhile, the download model allows you to watch your video anytime, anywhere  but, it cost money and can be seen when ever you want, but the down side is that you need to pay $2/episode. The one disadvantage for both models is that shows are usually not distributed online until the day after it is broadcasted and sometimes, it takes even longer.

I believe to preventing people from stealing content, television networks need to improve their online distribution models. First, they need to provide a larger archive online for streaming to promote their shows and stop people from pirating. Next, they need to decrease the cost for buying shows online in order to make people more likely to buy instead of streaming or pirating. Finally, and what I think is most important is that they need to release web versions on the same time the broadcast is released so that they can  get people to watch online and not be behind just because they didn’t watch the show on cable.