I am completely behind the idea that the content becomes unusable once the membership is terminated. The content in our membership area is for rent, it is not for sale. Otherwise, there is no reason to even continue a membership. I believe that is a flaw that was built into the overall membership model from day one. If you pay Blockbuster for a movie, you can't go in there and bitch because you could not copy the movie. We have all read this example: Join a site for 20 bucks that has 300 videos for for 15 cents each. Next month they add 6 more for which you pay 3.30 each. So why not wait 6 months and get a big pile of videos for a low unit cost again? Bounce from site to site till your hard drives are bloated and you then upload the entire library to RapidShare deleting the ones that are not our absolute favorites and start again.

It all depends on how we as site owners value our product. Manifest videos are not easily downloaded by people who don't surf the net looking for instructions. Yet our retention rate is fantastic. But since day one we have made it clear that the videos are being rented not sold. This has cost us a ton of points at review sites which continue to pursue the notion that content should be downloaded and kept by members. This sense of entitlement is being perpetrated by our industry and it is biting us in the ass. This "all you can eat buffet" is turning our sites into the Golden Coral. If we do not respect our content, if we do not place a high value on it, why should the public.