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Piracy is a cause of SOME of the decline but that is only because surfers are demanding content without paying for it. Because *we* have given them the sense of entitlement to said content.
Affiliates DID demand from program owners more and more content to give away for free, in the form of images, movies, hosted promo tools, etc...
We can only speculate about how the tremendous amounts of free exclusive content has contributed to the decline of the affiliate business model but, at the same time, we also have verifiable facts to back up our speculative synopsis that, prior to the proliferation of free exclusive content by affiliates and program owners, things were ticking along nicely. It was only once exclusive content started being offered up at the drop of a hat that sales starting going to shit.
If there was next to no, or little piracy before program owners started utilizing exclusive content and giving that content away for free (around 2006) yet now piracy is rife in the industry, there is really only one conclusion any reasonable person can draw and that is, program owners and affiliates created these problems themselves, because affiliates wanted more and more for free and program owners have it to them, that is, unfortunately, where the buck stops as far as dishing out 'blame'.
Yes, piracy is a problem today, but we created that problem, we enabled it to grow to the levels it is at right now, we realize its a problem but the horse has already left the barn, there's not too much we can do to curb it, especially while program owners are still throwing around their content at every wall they can find for free hoping that some of it sticks and ultimately drives a new sale to their website.
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