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The idea that having a choice, especially in what people choose to buy, has been a pretty central way to judge the success of a capitalist society, certainly during the cold war and beyond('all they have in Russia are cabbages and two TV channels'). The idea that the next movie will be really brilliant, the next album will be perfect, the next box set will contain all the deleted scenes...
The argument runs that by creating demand for more and more products you obviously create more sales - as people buy more and more - certainly in the middle days of DVDs you saw huge sales as people rushed to replace videos with new copies of movies they already had, even replace the same movie they have on an earlier DVD release (I must have bought Blade Runner in 6 different formats or releases over the years...).
So the world of marketing focuses on pushing a huge amount of product and companies produce a huge amount of television and movies - because they'll always be an audience for it. The more choice there is, the more people identify with certain genres or cult hits, or rush around looking for the next big thing.
And then what happens? The demand is built, the need is there, the product is available and then it's suddenly free. Not sold by someone else, not sold by pirates or dealers, not dodgy £5 copies in a pub from the Chinese guy - but completely, utterly free.
Suddenly that demand to own everything, that marketing push to tell people that owning something will make them happier doesn't mean more profit - it means far less. Suddenly you're faced with people being able to choose to pay only for what they want to pay for and not for anything else. Some might say the effects of that on the entertainment industry are simply inevitable.
Certainly one way to look at the explosion in piracy anyway
There are obviously some even more stark examples - if Sky spends millions telling people a new series of Lost is coming soon, that they need to sign up to watch it, not to miss it in two weeks... so 100,000's of people simply go and download it two weeks early.