You're probably already familiar with one way in which the industry uses technological control to create revenue streams. Let's say, back in that hotel room, I was struck with a sudden urge to watch Spider-Man 3. I could watch it on Sprint TV, where it would cost $5.99 for a three-day rental, streamed at 320 by 172 resolution. I could purchase (but not rent, as of a few weeks ago) the movie from the iTunes Store for $9.99 and watch on my MacBook. I could rent it on-demand in my hotel room, which would give me a plasma screen picture, but would cost $11.99 for 24 hours. Or with my MacBook and MasterCard in hand, I could wander down the street and rent a DVD with all the extras from a kiosk for $1.99. Of course, if I already owned the DVD, and had left it at home, that wouldn't have mattered at all; the cost to rent another copy remains the same.

Unless, of course, I spent 30 seconds setting up an illegal Internet download, which would give me a permanent copy, at an arbitrarily high resolution (up to and including Blu-ray, if I had the patience), that I could watch anywhere regardless of whether I had purchased the physical media, or had it with me.

Most of us have in some sense already paid for Spider-Man 3, as well as hundreds of other movies: they're part of a river of programming that show up on our television systems. But unless you've set up some form of digital recording system, unless you've figured out how to move those videos from there to your computer, unless you've mastered converting those videos into other formats, those videos stay locked in their own walled gardens. Many of us have done all of the above, but the vast majority have not and cannot. This allows Columbia Pictures to claim that mechanism is as important as content, which is why the same movie can be $12 in one place, $2 in another, and time-limited everywhere.

This is great for the studios, but it's not how the audience thinks (or should think) of their product. Paying for some form of content should directly connect to real received value: a performance of a movie in a theater. A DVD with additional commentary and deleted scenes. And yes, convenient on-demand availability, when appropriate. But too often, the "value" is based upon an indirect conspiracy to make it difficult or impossible to use the media you've already paid for, making the end result a tax on the technological have-nots.