Okay, I'm going to have to break this up for clarity's sake. Any ways, here goes:
Well, yeah, the store was just a setting for the analogy so it breaks down there. My point was that people who have the chance to buy, but don't, are proving that they weren't going to buy it anyways, even if they lose the ability to view it unlicensed. So I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on that point.
We will have to agree to disagree on that one. I think it's a person-by-person that can't really be known.
However, if by chance some bill does pass and unlicensed viewing goes away, I will bet that any increase in sales is a tiny fraction - if any at all - of the unlicensed views, aka "piracy".
I actually think that the passing of the bill will
decrease sales because it will limit the discovery of new films, games, music, etc. This is where "unlicensed viewing" becomes a catch-22, and also where studios really need to get their heads out of their asses.
For example, go on YouTube and look up any random bootleg clip from a movie (especially horror or comedy), and you'll see that it has upwards of 100,000 views. When studio execs (lawyers especially), they look at it, and instead of saying "hey, this clip from our movie has 100,000+ hits, and is giving us massive amounts of free advertising, we should do something like that because it will allow a lot more people to know about our product and boost our sales" they say, "hey, those thieving bastards are stealing money from us!". And at that point I do a facepalm because I've been trying to explain to them for a long time that "free clips are good, they help us sell the product".
However, I wasn't saying and don't defend a position of "more free is good". That's not my model, I just want to know that I want what I'm buying - per caveat emptor rules - before forking over the money. Entertainment doesn't give you the chance to inspect what you're buying first, and everyone has walked out of a theator or turned off the TV going "well, that wasn't worth it". So the chance to watch first is what I'm after (on things I can't actually see on licensed sites that is, I have Netflix and Hulu, etc. and wait for US productions to show up there). The only things I remember watching that I really liked and didn't buy are not available for purchase in the US (QI, etc.). And I still check every one, because I have no problem supporting the creators.
I like more free (see above comment), and I think that studios need to have more and newer content available for free streaming.
The hang-up with that lies within the unions and their having few clear guidelines as to residual distribution when it comes to "new media" (aka, the internet). I mentioned before the writer's strike, which was sparked by the writers not getting any money from the ad revenue garnered by streaming content. SAG (the Screen Actors Guild, the actors union) also has no clear guidelines on streaming content, although that's changing. And I'll be honest, a lot of messes when it comes to studios and unions stem from people just being greedy. That's why we need whistle blowers and people watching over the unions and studios to ensure they don't get out of control. Now if we only had a "remove head from ass" division, we would be set.
Re your other point about studios giving more away, I honestly believe it's the middlemen in the process that are causing the problems. They get in between creators and consumers so they can get dollars (or tens of dollars) where you get pennies, so the price is both massively inflated at the point of purchase, and much of that is not going to you or the other productive parts of the process, its getting lost in Hollywood accounting.
My hope is that we'll get artist->consumer works going with the middlemen reduced to their proper role as servants of the process instead of masters. I would bet that the prices drop massively while the revenues to the artists increase by the same amount.
A lot of it has to do with markups. The average DVD costs $3 or less (usually less) wholesale, and the stores then turn around sell them for $25+. So yeah, consumers are getting ripped off big-time. There are a ton of issues that need to be fixed in the whole system, and maybe someday they will be. We just have to keep working at it.