Right, but it's the makers of the big, top-50 films that are the ones that are ridiculously vocal about piracy, not the ones making the small top-200 (or less) films (unless they're flops by the big filmmakers). And the makers of those films can still monetize by licensing broadcast/distribution rights (i.e. to Netflix or to a non-profit for its "Movie Night" or what have you); from there, one can still get a very good estimate of an earning potential that's actually reliable, rather than one that's entirely dependent on an obsolete business model that's crumbling right before everyone's eyes thanks to the Internet.
OF course it is, they're the ones with the big platform to tell people about it.
And the makers of those films can still monetize by licensing broadcast/distribution rights (i.e. to Netflix or to a non-profit for its "Movie Night" or what have you); from there, one can still get a very good estimate of an earning potential that's actually reliable, rather than one that's entirely dependent on an obsolete business model that's crumbling right before everyone's eyes thanks to the Internet.
That's a nice idea, but you're putting the cart before the horse. You can't license a film that hasn't been made yet unless you have a very bankable package(of stars and other talent), and you can't easily get estimates of earning potential for other films because Netflix and other digital distributors don't publish that stuff - it's much harder to get information about the home video market compared to box office data. Licensing to broadcast or other distribution channels isn't something that just happens automatically - there's a huge, exacting, and expensive list of deliverables requirements, and it costs money to go to a film market or work through a sales agent. Even when everything goes smoothly, it usually takes a small picture a couple of years from when it starts looking for money to when it gets sold, and the sale often simply covers the costs of production.
Frankly, I don't think you grasp the economics here very well at all. Everyone knows the existing industry paradigm is on the way out, and has known that for a good long while. The problem from the industry standpoint is that the internet/tech sector loves disrupting things but is not that smart about monetizing them - witness the large number of tech companies that don't make a profit, and the fact that the main revenue stream for internet companies that do make a profit is from advertising. You know who has taken that to heart and uses that business model in the movie world? Adam Sandler. His films involve a bunch of highly-paid famous people, very cheap production, and crappy wrote-in-a-weekend stories with massive product placement opportunities, for which he takes a salary of about $20m a picture. Unlimited distribution works fine there because the film is basically an elaborate commercial, but it's hardly a good industry model.
