Yup, I can accept that.
You download Captain America: The First Avenger, watch it and find that you enjoyed it so much that you simply have to rush out to HMV to buy your own copy . . . yeah, right
It does,
to an extent. I have bought a lot of music off the back of downloading mashups. I've bought a number of 80s hip hop albums purely because of hearing samples from them appearing in albums by Girl Talk and E-603 and so on.
The trouble is that you have some people who appear to argue that all downloads lead to further sales, which is probably false, and you have some other people who will say that no downloads ever lead to lost sales, because downloaders would not have bought anything anyway, but would instead just had to live without it. The truth is somewhere in between, as for some people, some downloads will lead to more sales, while for some people, no downloads will ever lead to more sales, because why would they pay when they can get things for free? And of course, there will be some people who would buy things, but now don't, and those are genuine lost sales.
The difficulty comes in quantifying the gain versus the damage - just how many genuine lost sales are there compared to genuine gained sales? How many Beastie Boys albums am I buying in comparison to someone who is just downloading them because they can, even though they could afford to buy them and would, but for being able to get them for free?
Further, how can you use this new technology to generate more sales? How can the industry persuade people in that direction? I love iTunes, because it's great being able to whimsically download practically any song I please to my phone while I'm just walking down the street. Other people love having access to a subscription service that allows them to listen to anything they like for a monthly fee. Other people are perfectly happy to endure adverts if it means they get free streamed music. The industry needs to adapt to this sort of thing. I don't approve of copyright infringement, but I believe that it is utterly naive to think that you can legislate around a technical problem like this. They need to find a way to present a palatable alternative at a price point that a majority of people will accept.