Sony’s spastic hacks to protect copyrights are mileposts on a road nobody has yet successfully travelled. While middlemen (i.e., ITunes) are making money, the talent developers are headed off a cliff.

The movie industry has even more to lose. When even bad movies cost $150 million, each ticket lost to piracy becomes worrisome.

Downloaders brush producer worries aside, claiming a) artists can make it up in ticket sales; b) those who download products without paying for them never would have bought them anyway, and c) producers need to get with it and find a new lower-cost model. While there’s a whiff of accuracy in all three nostrums, they’re fairly easy answers for those who are blissfully unfettered by the costs of production, promotion and overhead.

No matter where you stand, this genie’s left the bottle. A whole generation looks at all information as files, to be manipulated any way the user sees fit.

easyCinema offers part of the answer. The European operation billed as “Low cost movie theatres” employs variable pricing, more like airlines.

You pay more to see a popular movie at a high traffic time, less when traffic’s low, and even less if the movie has already started in a half-empty theatre.

Thinking we could smoke the system (a la Priceline), Email Battles sought two tickets at the Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire easyCinema’s lowest allowed offering price: 1 pound. Desired showtime: Primetime. 5 p.m.

After a bit of cogitation the system gamefully offered up:

  • Serenity, today at 8:20 p.m. (1 pound)
  • Madagascar, tomorrow at 1:30 p.m./3:30 p.m. (1/2 pound)
  • Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, tomorrow at 1:45 p.m./3:45 p.m. (1/2 pound)

While each choice is doubtlessly an excellent display of artistic output, they all seem to be a bit long-in-the-tooth.

“How,” we pondered, “will the system respond to a hot-and-current movie?”

In went Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, any price at Primetime. Results: A plethora of choices. 4.5 pounds (US$7.70 per ticket).

Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Charge what the market will bear, but fill the doggoned seats. Prefer watching at home? easyCinema offers a Netflix-alike, at least while the studios are still stamping DVDs.

As the recent bitTorrent capitulation agreement demonstrates, producers have been not-too-secretly salivating at the promise of pushing distribution costs onto the shoulders of broadband suppliers and end-users. Cool album covers are headed for the dustbin of History.

In the end, p2p file sharers may get their wish. Any song or movie, anytime. Price? The system will extract it, through luxury prices for the best seats or files, and huge discounts for less savory experiences. At that point, most consumers will find a price they’re willing to pay. Holdouts will be labelled thieves by acclaim.

For that to happen in the broadband world, distributors may need to buy the pipes, or vice versa. Expect it.