Seen a funny missive today from the owner of RACS:

R1 studios are not going to be able to build a future on paid downloads or advertising revenue shares. That strategy caters mostly to the folks who are currently stealing Anime, and is DOA. From my point of view, I only care about the concerns of paying Anime fans. Torrent downloaders and bootleggers have no stake, and therefore no voice, in the Anime industry and their concerns should go entirely ignored by the industry except to the point of what might entice them to become paying customers again. [Emphasis mine — Author]

So, Robert suggests "the Anime industry" to ignore the market that is growing (and in which he is not a player) and concentrate on the one which is shrinking (and in which he operates). This seems entirely too transparent to me. I cannot answer better than Penny Arcade did in a strip. Fight the rear guard all you want, the tide cannot be stemmed. I am definitely going to step up purchases of downloads (minus DRM, of course).

UPDATE: AstroNerdBoy thinks the future is in "freemium" model. Honestly sounds too much of a buzzword to me, but...

UPDATE: Omo discussed it further, mostly from the BD angle. He is also pretty hard on the "digital delivery" in the comments. I tried to explain that lower quality makes a ton of sense for my situation. My facts are: a) I do not have a 1080 display device (this laptop's display is 900 pixels tall), b) I do not have a BD spindle (not even a consumer one), c) I have a high performance broadband connection (low megabytes per second grade). Why would not would Crunchy sell me some Precure at $2 a pop (aside form it being a lousy show)? The question is only how many fans are like me, and how many are willing to get BDs. But he won't listen. I guess we're just going to fight with our money, K-ON style.