In a recent analyst call, Disney-ABC Television president framed content piracy as a competitor. Disney has always had the most fierce content attorneys, so this is a surprising quote. Via an arstechnica article I found in Adriana’s furl.

“So we understand piracy now as a business model,” said Anne Sweeney, the president of Disney-ABC Television Group. “It exists to serve a need in the marketplace specifically for consumers who want TV content on demand and it competes for consumers the same way we do, through high-quality, price and availability and we don’t like the model. But we realize it’s effective enough to make piracy a key competitor going forward. And we’ve created a strategy to address this threat with attractive, easy to use ways to for viewers to get the content they want from us legally; in other words, keeping honest people honest.”